


Splinterpoint

by ReginaStClaire



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aliens, Alternate Dimensions, Apocalypse, Bad Puns, Cake, Demons, Geeky References, Humor, M/M, Mad Science, Mercenaries, Multiverse, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Slow Burn, UST, barbarians - Freeform, cursed burrito, everthing all the time, m/m - Freeform, music magic, trope-splosion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-27 11:13:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5046124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReginaStClaire/pseuds/ReginaStClaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For stranded Earthling Nunzio Arquette, life in the interdimensional megalopolis of Splinterpoint isn’t a piece of cake. Between cutthroat guilds, his flamboyant alien ex-boyfriend, and an unfortunate run-in with a cursed burrito, all he wants is to get back home — if only he knew how to find Earth again. His job as a bounty-hunter is just to pay the bills, really.</p><p>That is, until an attractive, affable, magic-wielding barbarian named Kol’daar crashes Nunzio’s licensing evaluation with the Mercenaries’ Guild. Nunzio ends up on probation, and Kol’daar moves in next door. And to make matters worse, an apocalypse threatens the city. Of course, the only things that can stop it are Kol’daar, armed with his trusty music-magic, and Nunzio’s own unique destructive ability — that is, if the demons, pissed-off landladies, teenaged girls, self-interested thieves, radio evangelists, and mad scientists don’t get them first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for a prompt for the M/M Romance Group on Goodreads as part of their annual Don't Read in the Closet event, specifially the 2015 Love is an Open Road event.
> 
> The original prompt was as follows:
> 
> _Dear Author,_
> 
> _Of all the shabby hotels in the city, my biggest competition, the most arrogant asshole in the world, was staying in the room next door, playing his TV loud enough for me to hear Judge Judy’s verdict, and each time he leaves to use the ONE bathroom on this entire floor that we all have to share, he drums his fingers across MY door._
> 
> _Just. Because._
> 
> _He’s waiting for me to make my move, I know it. But he’s not going to steal my target AGAIN. Or… anything else… again. I know how to deal with Mr. Does-jobs-while-shirtless. Like, seriously, we get it. You work out!_
> 
> _I thought dealing with him was bad enough. Finding an international convention of assassins nesting downstairs in the lobby? Or catching my (very) ex-mentor (ex-everything…) skulking in the shady bar next door? I don’t know what’s going on, but suddenly this job is looking a little too popular, and now when I hear those assured fingers tap across my door, it doesn’t feel like so much a threat anymore._
> 
> _At least not the biggest threat today…_
> 
> _Loves: Action, sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, mystery— all the excitement!_
> 
> _Dislikes: Rape, non-con, dub-con, torture and very dark-dark stories._
> 
> _Have fun, and thank you!_
> 
> _Sincerely,_
> 
>   _ttg_
> 
> Anyway, I did a lot of silly things to the prompt, and this is the result. I hope you all enjoy.

**CHAPTER ONE**

The commotion in the rooms both above and below his own pathetic little hotel-room-cum-studio-apartment woke Nunzio Arquette from a sound sleep. He dragged a hand over his face, the scrape of his stubble loud in the immediate silence around him, but louder sounds of stomping footsteps, furniture scraping across the floors, and shouting voices clamored all over the building.

He scowled groggily. He hated waking up to other people’s bad days.

Why was it so damn noisy? Sounded like people moving out, moving in. Must be the first of the month, then.

His eyes popped open, and he sat up swearing. He’d pulled the blackout curtains last night, which made it impossible to tell what time it was without glancing at the chronometer that occupied his nightstand beside the ancient bed. Its glowing numerals confirmed that it was midmorning, and it had yet again failed to sound his morning wake-up call an hour previous. With another heartfelt curse, he threw himself out of bed.

He’d managed to get dressed in his least-rumpled black jeans, white collar shirt, and black tie in a likely wasted attempt to appear more professional, and was waiting for the coffeemaker to finish coughing up a brew so strong he’d be able to stand the spoon straight up in the mug when a knock sounded on his door. He paused in scarfing down the hasty breakfast of dry Kobold-O’s and walked to the door, still chewing. He hit the viewscreen control next to the door frame. It came to staticky life, showing the dingy hall outside. The familiar face of his landlady peered directly into the camera, close enough that the curve of the lens distorted her already-unpleasant, crocodilian features.

“Open up, Nunzio, I know you’re in there,” Vorkra said, showing her impressive array of teeth. After half a year of living in the building, Nunzio knew that she tried to approximate the body language of other species she dealt with as a courtesy. At the moment, though, he honestly couldn’t tell if she was trying to smile or intimidate.

He swallowed his dry cereal with moderate difficulty and pressed his hand against the lock below the viewscreen. The door slid open with the anemic hiss of aging pneumatics, revealing all seven feet of Vorkra, who appeared to be wearing her very best pink housecoat and slippers for the grand occasion of the moving day. The color did not complement her teal-and-orange scaly hide.

“Good morning, Vorkra,” he said, leaning against the threshold, trying to block her view of the disaster area he called home. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Vorkra smacked her jaws together, putting two of her four hands on her hips. “You have an _official visitor_ asking after you. I made him wait in the lobby, but he’s waving a Merc Guild badge at me like it should mean something.”

“Dammitall,” Nunzio growled, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. Thanks. Tell him I’ll be right down.”

“Something I oughtta know about, kid?” Vorkra asked, not budging.

Out in the hall, a little green man carrying a cardboard box three times larger than himself tried to tiptoe past. He might’ve even made it, but he stepped on a squeaky board and then compounded his blunder with a startled squeak of his own. Vorkra set her jaw and lashed out with her long, leathery tail. It struck flat across the alien’s gut, slammed him against the wall, and pinned him there. His box tumbled and burst open, scattering a variety of brightly colored polyhedrons and pornographic magazines.

Vorkra pulled her lips back in an unmistakable snarl, craning her neck in a one eighty that would have put Linda Blair to shame. “I know you aren’t thinking of skipping out, Uyowa, not when you owe me for last month, still. Why don’t you just stay put while I finish with this one, then the two of us can talk, hmm?”

“A-affirmative,” came the weak, gasping reply.

The ferocious landlady turned back to Nunzio without checking her expression. “You in trouble with your guild? I don’t harbor oathbreakers.”

“Not trouble,” he assured hastily. “It’s time to re-up my badge, is all. He’s gonna proctor my next snag, make sure I’m following protocol.” At her skeptical stare, he held up his hands defensively. “Look, I’ll be right down. He won’t darken your doorstep much longer, I swear. Thanks for coming up to tell me, I know how busy you are.”

“Yeah, yeah. If you could keep your damn scry-cube from cracking, I wouldn’t _have_ to play messenger,” Vorkra said, but the snarl lessened to a sneer. “Just get him out of here. Don’t need rubberneckers cluttering up the joint on a moving day. The crap you make me put up with. You’re lucky I like you.”

Nunzio rather thought it wasn’t him that she liked but the year of rent he’d paid up front when he arrived on her doorstep. He wisely held his tongue as she began to leave, still grumbling. She kicked the box aside and scooped up the little green man, who whimpered like a kicked puppy. She tucked him under one arm like a jock with a football and stomped off down the hall.

He stepped back into his room, letting the door shut automatically. With his proctor already waiting downstairs, Nunzio really couldn’t afford to dick around. If he lost his license with the Mercenaries’ Guild, he’d have to revamp his whole master plan. Such as it was.

At least his coffee had finished. He burnt his tongue on it while he checked his weapons. The nerve disruptor went in the shoulder holster, and a matte-black machete in a sheath strapped to his right thigh. He rolled up his sleeves so nothing would block his access to the wrist-comm and its handy built-in self-retracting monomolecular wire.

The coat he pulled on over his less than stylish ensemble was also less than stylish, a washed-out black, full-length affair that had been made for a much taller being. He’d had to trim a good three feet off the bottom so he wouldn’t trip on it and cut the sleeves off entirely, which gave it a frayed kind of redneck chic, but at least the pockets were huge and plentiful. He’d learned early on that a bounty hunter could never have too many pockets. His other miscellaneous tools of the trade were stashed in the coat, which made it a good deal heavier and gave it odd bulges.

He pulled a pair of chunky black sunglasses out of one pocket, slid them on over his aquiline nose, smoothed his shortish, in-need-of-a-trim dark hair away from his face, and checked his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of his closet door. He looked fucking ridiculous, like a scrawny, postapocalyptic Blues Brother without the sideburns.

He tilted his head.

No, he’d need a fedora for that.

Why didn’t he have a fedora?

He wasn’t worried about standing out in a crowd. In Splinterpoint, an interdimensional melting-pot cesspool, _everybody_ walked around looking like costumed rejects from a Japanese fantasy RPG. His outfit was dull as old toast by this city’s standards, or lack thereof. But it was all functional, and besides, there wasn’t time to change. He laced up his combat boots with finality.

Fortified for his yearly certification as he was ever going to get, Nunzio exited his hovel with a sigh. As it was a moving day, the line for the ancient, decrepit elevator was a mile long. He opted for the stairs as the faster option, but even these were crowded with other people who’d decided not to wait. He dodged various beings laden with belongings as he thundered down the steps from the seventh floor. At least no one was blocking the way with massive couches or beds, as the tiny rooms came fully furnished.

Rounding the landing on the third, he plowed smack into a man who looked Human enough, though he knew better than to make firm assumptions about either species or gender. The guy was puffy faced and sweaty, dark skinned above a priest’s collar and an Old West−style duster coat.

As Nunzio bounced off the portly preacher, he felt the sharp prickle of magic. Shit, the guy must have an enchanted watch or something. Nunzio only hoped the spell hadn’t broken in the collision. He didn’t have time to haggle fault and compensation right now.

“Excuse me, son,” the preacher drawled, brushing off his front with white-gloved hands and straightening his wide-brimmed hat. “But you ought to watch where you’re going.”

“Sorry about that,” Nunzio said. He ducked around the man. “Kind of in a hurry.”

He made it the rest of the way without further incident. He stepped out into the lobby, edging out of the stairwell traffic while he got his breath back. That’s when he spotted his Guild contact, and he groaned aloud.

Lolanna Solang was easy to spot. It was also easy to see why his landlady had mistaken her for a male. She stood beside the check-in desk, six and a half feet of brooding, muscular disapproval. Her age was impossible to pinpoint, lines weathered into her tan face, but her brown buzz cut showed no trace of gray. The metal patch stapled into the scar tissue over her left eye dispelled any notion that she was a woman who’d dye her hair for vanity’s sake, to say nothing of the shapeless, hardened-leather body armor that encased her like a carapace. Twin swords poked up over either broad shoulder, and a belt of grenades encircled her waist.

Of course he’d get Lolanna as his proctor. She was highly thought of in the Guild as a go-to lady when you needed brawn, brains, and brisk efficiency all in one rigidly humorless package. Nunzio wondered if it’d be worth the rescheduling fee if he claimed illness. There was a chance he could get another proctor. A pretty slim chance, though. There were many other Guild members certified for the job in this sector, but only a precious few that could work with him— or more accurately, his ability. Or, even _more_ accurately, his disability.

While he dithered, Lolanna spotted _him_ and made the whole internal debate moot when she took purposeful strides in his direction. She didn’t have to duck around anyone. People got out of Lolanna’s way long before they’d ever truly been in it.

“Hunter Arquette,” she greeted icily when she drew near. The frown lines around her mouth deepened. “You are late. Points are deducted for tardiness.”

“My apologies, Proctor Solang,” Nunzio said, trying to soothe her with formality. “My alarm clock broke.”

“We shall begin without further delay,” she told him, no sign of thawing in her tone.

She drew a small, round device from her belt and hit a recessed button in its bronze casing. The bauble sprang into action, zipping up in the air with a faint hum to hover just over their heads. A slot opened, showing the lens of the recording drone’s camera.

Lolanna snapped her fingers to get the thing to focus on her and then began to narrate. “This is an official performance evaluation for the renewal of bounty hunter license rating X-d6 for Member 769, Nunzio Arquette of Splinterpoint Mercenaries’ Guild, Sector 31. I, Member 346, Lolanna Solang, bounty hunter license rating X-d4, will be acting as proctor. Let the official record show that Member 769 is twenty minutes late for the evaluation, resulting in a five-point deduction from the overall score.”

Nunzio sighed. He should have just rescheduled.

“Now I commence the evaluation,” Lolanna said, and the drone rose a little higher to include them both in the shot. She instructed flatly, “Hunter Arquette, choose an assignment from a Guild-approved message space.”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Nunzio nodded and led the way out of the busy lobby and onto the busier street.

****

Splinterpoint was a bizarre city. Gleaming spires of space-age materials jutted up next to sprawling stone ziggurats, which in turn were abutted by tiny beehive dwellings, soaring pagodas, cyclopean cathedrals, and thatched cottages. And it went on like that, in every direction, forever. The Cartographers’ Guild was always asking for more adventurous souls to go and map the endless maze of streets, always asking because the few returnees from the frontiers of the known city would come back to report the discovery of _more_ city.

Here and there were buildings that would look almost normal in the average American city back on Earth, even if they were generally somehow askew, either vaguely antique or vaguely futuristic, or like his apartment building, a mixture of both. The neon sign out front that proclaimed it to be Le Chateau Florida would not have looked out of place in Miami of the 1920s, if the 1920s had had the unreliable steam-powered technology that accounted for half of Vorkra’s perpetually foul temper. Of course, it looked incredibly out of place _here_ , next to something that could only be describe as a space hacienda and across the street from an entirely metallic hexagonal structure whose main feature was the deeply etched streaks of rust and corrosion.

But there also seemed to be an odd sympathy between buildings, as well, sometimes more than one of a similar style clustered in little neighborhoods. Le Chateau Florida had one such neighbor, a tower that might have once been taller than the hotel’s eight stories, but it was falling in on itself slowly, floor by floor. Nunzio’s own tiny window had a lovely view of its crumbling brick wall.

Despite the lack of structural integrity, there were several businesses staked out on the lower floors, the most successful being a no-close bar called Cream, which catered to Humans and other humanoid species.

With a name like that, of course it had to be a gay bar. Had his situation been a bit less bleak, Nunzio might have called it a home away from home, except he really didn’t go out for fun anymore. There wasn’t much point to it, ever since the Burrito Incident.

The important part was that, like most bars, taverns, and pubs in Splinterpoint, it had Guild-approved boards for posting jobs for just about every guild there was. Pretty much the only reason he ever went into Cream was to check the listings, and once in a blue moon— which, given the changeable Splinterpoignant sky, happened more often than one would think— he’d have a drink after a tough job. He’d probably need one after a day spent with the Buzz-cut Buzzkill.

Twin white suns blazed down on the city today, baking the packed yellow dirt of the road, and eliminating any possible shade as Nunzio made his way to the bar. The masses of Splinterpoint were just as varied as the buildings. They tended to gravitate toward familiar surroundings, or at least places designed for their body types. The population of Sector 31 was predominately humanoid, give or take a few pairs of limbs, and most were of a multiversal-average medium height. That was where the similarities ended, with skin tones varying to every shade of the rainbow, and just as much fur, feather, and scales on display. It wasn’t more or less horrifying than the average comic book convention.

Now that he wasn’t in such a rush, he resumed his usual careful maneuvering that ensured he wouldn’t so much as brush against any random stranger. Scratch that; he was even more careful than usual because of the recording drone. The Guildmasters who’d be watching the replay later could be really fussy over what constituted an abuse of abilities, and he’d hate to lose his badge over an accident like he’d had with the preacher man this morning.

Of course, given the population density in this area, this resulted in some interesting contortions to avoid collisions, a couple tedious pauses while he waited for large groups to pass, and a bemused proctor with a long-suffering expression. Lolanna didn’t say anything about the slow progress, though, and that was fine by Nunzio.

They made it to the bar without trouble. The interior was dimly lit, the dance floor fairly deserted except for the lackluster go-go boys on the day shift, and only a handful of patrons lounged on the stools by the bar. The lizardman behind the counter polished some tumblers with a clean towel, his chameleonesque eyes splitting his attention between the served customers and the door. Nunzio waved vaguely before walking toward the Mercenaries’ Guild’s board, tucked in a corner by the jukebot.

“Good day, sir!” cried the jukebot as he passed by, its multicolored lights whirling. “Four songs for just one credit! We have hits from twelve major dimensions and their minor iterations!”

“No, thanks,” Nunzio said, ducking around the clunky old thing to look at the postings. From his few pleasure jaunts to the bar, he already knew they didn’t have any music from his Earth.

“Good day, madam!” the jukebot tried again when Lolanna followed.

She cut off its cheerful spiel with a curt, “I prefer silence.” The jukebot drooped as it switched into standby mode, its lights dimming forlornly.

“Ouch, you shut him down fast,” Nunzio commented mildly. “Can’t blame him, though. I mean, not liking music really is kind of a turnoff.”

Lolanna showed no sign of either rising to the bait or getting the joke. Yep, today was going to be ever so much fun.

He turned his attention back to the task at hand. The pickings today were sadly slim. There were several older notices tacked to the corkboard, and these he ignored. He didn’t want a case that would take five weeks to wrap up. He needed an easy mark that he could snag and be done with before sundown. The newest wanted poster was dated just that morning and looked promising.

“‘Wanted: Blatt Skroinx,’” he read aloud, pointing to the notice so the drone would zoom in on it. “Posted by the Mercurian Guild. Seems he made off with a shipment of volatile alchemical reagents yesterday. They want him alive and able to talk. Fifteen thousand credits.” He whistled softly. “They want him pretty bad, I’d say.”

“With a reward that steep, competition is highly likely. Failure to fulfill the chosen objective will result in a temporary probation as well as another Guild evaluation,” Lolanna stipulated as per protocol. She cocked her head at him. “Are you certain this is the assignment you wish to choose?”

Nunzio studied the flier, noting the list of places the target’s known haunts, as well as his features. Blatt was of a bipedal porcine species more akin to warthogs than swine, stood a bowlegged four feet tall, and had a nasty look in his beady eyes.

All in all, he was exactly as Nunzio remembered him. The surprising thing wasn’t seeing his face on a wanted poster; it was seeing it associated with a well-executed heist. The guy was a low-grade smuggler of mean intelligence and few connections. Nunzio had only dealt with him a handful of times after his first arrival in Splinterpoint, and he remembered Zin bitching about the pigman’s incompetence on each occasion.

Smugglers and thieves kept close company, but the guilds were completely separate. Out of all of them, the crime guilds were the most ruthlessly territorial over their professions. If Blatt had done the deed on his own, the Thieves’ Guild would be itching to take their pound of flesh as well. Unless the Thieves’ Guild had put him up to it in the first place.

Zinchalte ought to know about it, either way. He also probably knew more about Blatt’s few friends, even fewer of whom would be the sort to harbor someone who had pissed of the Mercurians, the cultish alchemists notorious for both grudges and explosions.

Nunzio grimaced. Zin didn’t owe him any favors. He might not be able to help, either, if it was something the Thieves’ Guild had green-lit. But none of the rest of the contracts on the board were likely to be as easy, fast, or lucrative.

“Yes,” he said finally, taking the flier and pocketing it. “Blatt Skroinx is my target.”


	2. Chapter Two

**CHAPTER TWO**

The best way to get a hold of Zinchalte was to call him from an unknown comm-unit. The thief screened his comms, and there was no way of knowing who he was avoiding on any particular day. Well, Nunzio knew _he_ was probably perpetually on Zin’s direct-to-message list, but he had never tested it out since they’d parted ways. However, Zin had a fairly extensive network of informants who for obvious reasons had no wish to associate their personal comm-units with that of an up-and-comer in the Thieves’ Guild, and an unexpected call from an unfamiliar source was pretty much guaranteed to get Zin’s attention.

Some enterprising member of the Communications Guild had established a pay-comm outpost several blocks to the south. It was to this dubious installation that Nunzio led his dour proctor. The outpost itself reminded Nunzio of an automated gas station from Earth without the convenience store, and instead of fuel pumps, there were a couple dozen tall, silver-sheened egg chairs set up beneath a dome-shaped transmitter. A low plasma fence kept out the riffraff. A lipless, whey-faced being with three milky, lidless, pupil-less eyes manned the tollbooth.

“Welcome to Comm-As-You-Are Transmission Outpost,” the pasty attendant greeted with the bored tone of someone who knew hir job should actually be performed by a robot, but needed the paycheck anyway. The name tag clipped to hir yellow uniform vest proclaimed ‘HI MY NAME IS Mxoawimsz.’

“I need to place a call,” Nunzio said.

“Local calls are three credits for the first five minutes, one credit for each additional minute. Interdimensional calls are ten credits for the first minute and five for each additional. Calls for masturbatory purposes are strictly prohibited,” Mxoawimsz said, pausing in hir recitation to give Nunzio the hairy eyeball, as if he fit some kind of wanker profile. Then zhe looked between him and Lolanna, sniffed, and went on. “Only one being allowed in the unit at a time. Damaging or tampering with the equipment will result in fines up to and including limbs and/or internal organs, enforced by the Guild of Amputators, Vivisectionists, and Haruspices. Does the customer wish to posit any queries at this time?”

“What’s ‘haruspices’ mean?” he asked. “I mean, I get the gist, but specifically.”

“Questions irrelevant to the transaction are outside the purview of this office,” the alien said unhelpfully. And seriously, ‘purview of this office’ was pretty pretentious coming from a peon who monitored payphones for perverts while wearing a yellow vest and name tag.

“I still need to place a call. Local.” He put his credit card on the counter.

Mxoawimsz swiped it, handed it back, and raised the yellow-and-black striped bar to allow him into the outpost. “Unit five, second row on the left. Thank you for choosing Comm-As-You-Are.”

About time. Christ, payphones back home were never this big of a hassle.

“I shall wait here,” Lolanna informed Nunzio. “The drone will accompany you, however.”

Nunzio rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. The drone hummed as it followed him into the egg chair. The interior was smooth black polymer for easy decontamination, the seat wide enough for four or five Humans. Nunzio plunked himself down and the drone hovered beside his head. He shooed it up higher, where it wouldn’t be seen by the camera, tilted the adjustable screen away from its prying eye, and then entered Zin’s contact into the comm-unit. A privacy field sprang up in the entryway as the system made the connection.

Zinchalte picked up on the third ring. The dark screen resolved into the alien’s familiar fine-boned features. He was shown from the waist up, and he was clearly lying in his opulent bed, not a stitch of clothing on what was visible of his svelte form. Zin was a Twink, a monogendered species quite like the willowiest Human males in almost every respect, save the periwinkle-blue skin, silvery hair shaded in various pastel tints, and jewel-toned, catlike eyes. His were a deep, luminous sapphire. They widened when he saw Nunzio, and the slit pupils dilated fractionally.

“Well, this _is_ a surprise,” Zin said, his mellow tenor purring out of the recessed speakers. He brushed chin-length, faintly pink locks away from his face. “Nunzio Arquette. I knew you weren’t dead yet.”

“Mornin’, starshine. No, not dead yet. Not interrupting anything, I hope,” Nunzio said and meant it. Twinks had a very loose set of social mores. He knew for a fact that Zin wouldn’t end either call or any hanky-panky that might occur during their conversation.

“Just my beauty sleep,” Zin said with a yawn. He stretched, knowing full well how to appeal to the camera. Nunzio tried not to pay too much attention to the tempting display. “It has been a long time, though, hasn’t it? I thought you’d lost my contact.”

Nunzio shrugged. “I’ve been keeping busy.”

“The Merc Guild does keep their members hopping. Have you been offplane much?”

Nunzio didn’t see the point in lying. Zin had probably been keeping tabs on him all this time, anyway, the paranoid bastard. Or maybe Nunzio was the paranoid one. Whatever.

“No,” he said. “We’re not all insanely rich enough to afford our own personal diport, and hell if I’m depending on public transport for work. Besides, it’s a pain in the ass to comply with the magic and tech restrictions for every little backworld dimension.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d have to worry about the magic restrictions as much,” Zinchalte mused.

Nunzio’s forced a smile. “You’d be surprised how few magic-based worlds want a guy like me coming in to mess with their shit.”

“So you still haven’t got the hang of that part, then.”

He shook his head. Zin had helped him quite a lot after the Burrito Incident, but certain aspects of his disability just refused to be harnessed.

“Not to rehash an old argument, but you’re letting half your talent go to waste.” Zin sighed as he _totally_ began to rehash an old argument.

“It’s not a waste if it doesn’t do anybody any good.”

“It _has_ saved your life a few times,” Zin said archly. “Who says it doesn’t do any good?”

“Well, they don’t _say_ it doesn’t do them any good,” Nunzio replied, “but mostly because they’re dead.”

Zin rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. That was a long time ago. Is it _really_ still a sore subject?”

Of course it was. Zin had never understood why it affected Nunzio so badly. The thief had a lifetime Splinterpoint resident’s view of death and destruction, which was somewhere between blasé and ruthless. Not to mention he had the added benefit of not seeing what exactly had happened in that tomb. Nunzio still had nightmares about the glittering piles of platinum, the scent of dust and blood, the inhuman screams echoing in his ears.

Currently, an inhuman whine crept into his perception. Behind his sunglasses, Nunzio glanced over and saw the spheroid little drone hovering nearer and nearer, trying to edge into a position to get a view of the screen. Careful not to draw attention to the movement, he batted it back with one hand. The little bot spun like a top for a moment before woozily drifting up toward the apex of the egg.

“Not to rehash an old argument,” Nunzio repeated with a mocking edge, “it’s none of your business. Something else might be, though. I _did_ have a reason for waking you at the crack of noon.”

Zin did not look surprised. He sighed again, this time with put-upon weariness. “So it’s business, not pleasure. How dull. What kind of business is it?”

He licked his lips and leaned forward. Here went nothing. “I need some information.”

“Oh? As a favor?”

There was a hook buried in the mild question. Nunzio knew better than to fall into such an obvious trap. There were no true favors in Splinterpoint, only a complex system of debt. Nunzio had learned that the hard way, from Zin himself, and he didn’t make the same mistake twice.

“As an official transaction with a bounty hunter. I’ll keep you anonymous, of course.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the drone creeping closer again. He tilted the screen further away.

“Can you afford me?” Zin teased, smiling with his full, blue lips and lowering his thick, pale eyelashes in a sultry smolder. If Zin wanted to banter, it meant he was in a charitable mood. This could be easier than anticipated.

Nunzio smirked, feeling a bit hollow and hoping it didn’t show. “Oh, I think so. From the look of you, you’re still pretty cheap.”

Zin gave a soft, musical chuckle and winked at him. “Only because I give you a discount, for old times’ sake. What do you want to know?”

“Everything you got on Blatt Skroinx. Particularly anywhere you think he might go to ground when he’s on the run.”

“You’re after that old hog?” Zin perked up as much as one could when they refused to make the effort to actually rise.

“Yep. How cheap can you go, for old times’ sake?” Nunzio had to be very careful not to add any bitter sarcasm to the phrase.

The alien made a show of biting his lip in consideration. “Wellllll,” he drawled slowly, “considering his poor performance in the past, I hardly owe him any secrecy. Gimme a cut of the reward if you get him. Say… twenty percent?”

Nunzio felt his eyebrows rise, but he quickly schooled his expression. “And that’s supposed to be cheap? Old times must not count for much. Five.”

“The past is gone, hon, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to pay it off,” Zin replied. “And you know I don’t get out of bed for five.”

“Didn’t see you getting out of bed for twenty, either.”

“If you were here, I doubt I’d get out of bed at all.” Zin waggled his eyebrows. “But it’s so good to see your face first thing in the morning, I’ll settle for eighteen.”

“That’s highway robbery.”

“Who _do_ you think you’re talking to?”

Zin loved to haggle as much as he loved to banter, so they could have dickered for quite some time. But Nunzio was on a time table, albeit one of his own making. He was eager to find the target and have done, and he also didn’t like talking to Zin, especially with so much familiar territory on display. He settled as fast as his pride would allow, on the only moderately outrageous fee of twelve percent.

“And not to demean your skills, honey, but if you don’t catch him you’ll still owe me,” Zin added as they wrapped up.

Nunzio hesitated. “Owe you what?”

Zin gave a wide, inviting smile. “Dinner. Somewhere nice, too, not at any of those greasy spoons you like. It’s been a long time, Nunzio. We ought to catch up. And afterward, well, who knows what we might get up to?” He raised one silky shoulder in a careless shrug.

How a shrug could convey so much sexual promise, Nunzio would never understand. He swallowed with his throat suddenly a bit too dry. His body didn’t care about all the very good reasons Nunzio and Zin had parted ways. It just remembered in a deep, Pavlovian way how nicely Zinchalte’s body complimented it, and how often those compliments had been bestowed. It didn’t help that Zin had been his last lover before his disability slammed the door on his sex life entirely.

Old habits died hard, but so would Nunzio, because there was no way Zin— or anyone, for that matter— would ever touch him again. Insinuations aside, the radio silence between them all this time had gone both ways. As far as he was concerned, it would resume when he ended this call. He was going to catch Blatt, pay Zin off, and then continue to pretend the Twink didn’t exist.

“Deal,” he agreed. He batted the persistent little drone away from the screen again. “So do tell about dear, old Blatt. I’m paying by the minute here, you know.”

“Somehow, I get the feeling you say that a lot. All right, all right,” Zin placated when he saw Nunzio bridle at the barb. “Down to business. Blatt has the social appeal of an amoeba and about the same intelligence. I can’t picture any of his usual crew standing by him in a pinch. If it came to trouble, he’d probably hole up with his wife.”

“He’s _married_?” The shock was completely unfeigned. Blatt was a pig, not only biologically but in every figurative sense as well. That someone had married the bastard was almost as unbelievable as the solo heist he had purportedly accomplished.

“Yes,” Zin said with relish, because he loved juicy gossip almost as much as he loved stealing shit and playing head games. “ _I_ think it was an arranged marriage. They’re usually quite distant with each other, and you can see why— I mean, just look at the guy. And his wife’s his exact opposite. She’s a decent business-sow and has done everything she can to hide their connection.”

“Can’t say I blame her. But if they’re estranged, why would he go to her for help? Even if he did, why would she help him?”

Zin shrugged. “It’s a cultural thing, all honor and blood oaths and whatever, you know. She’d have to help him, whether she wanted to or not, or risk a feud between their houses back in their home dimension.”

“Huh. Sucks for her,” Nunzio said. “Where can I find her?”

“She runs a specialty lingerie shop on Yantero Road. Terrible stuff, wouldn’t be caught dead in it myself. Chafes, you know.”

“Not really. Lingerie isn’t my thing.”

The sound of a door opening came clearly across the line. Zinchalte didn’t look toward whoever had just walked in offscreen, but he did finally sit up. “I’ll message you the rest. But breakfast has just arrived, and I’m _famished_.”

The tone was familiar enough, though definitely not what Zin sounded like when he wanted food.

“Don’t get distracted. Get me that shop’s address first thing. I can’t be the only one after this guy.”

“Sure thing, hon. Good hunting, byyyee!” Zin caroled and ended the call.

The privacy field vanished, and Nunzio took a moment to massage his temples. The drone hummed, drifting in front of him to look at the darkened screen. When it realized the thing had gone blank, the hum took on a faintly frustrated buzz, and it whirled to zoom in on his face.

“Don’t give me that look. Anonymous contacts are allowed under the Guild Charter, section 7, paragraph 23, subparagraph H.”

The drone zoomed out and spun aimlessly, looking for something more interesting to film. Nunzio sighed. His wrist-comm chimed, and he hit the projection button. It was Zin’s info, sent from an untraceable comm, and the thief was as good as his word. The holographic file displayed all the dirt on Blatt, starting with the address of his wife, Gronl Skroinx.

When he saw the name of the shop, Nunzio blinked and grinned. “Right. Looks like we’re going _shopping_.”

****

Once he’d collected his proctor, they made their way to a busier street to flag down a taxi. The lifeforms of the city teemed around them, but one glance at Lolanna and the small arsenal visible on her person kept the beggars and pickpockets at bay. It took a while to find a tech-powered cab, and she seemed to grow more impatient with him, manifesting in heavy sighs every few minutes, like she was an in-law finding fault with his housekeeping habits. Nothing he could do about it, though, so he continued to try and flag down anything from hovercar to electro-rickshaw. Finally, an ancient-looking dogcart pulled up, pulled by one enormous black dog, and no driver.

“Hey, Bub, need a lift?” the dog growled through six-inch fangs. He had blazing red eyes, and the saliva that drooled from his jaws sizzled when it hit the asphalt, leaving little smoking craters.

“Depends. You got enchantments on this thing anywhere?” Nunzio asked, eyeing the contraption dubiously. If magic wasn’t involved, he had no idea how the thing kept from falling apart.

“Nah, I get hex-hives. Same for you?” the cabbie asked, not without sympathy.

“Yeah,” Nunzio lied because it was easier and none of the dog’s business.

“Hop in. Where you headed?”

Nunzio gave him the address and settled in. Lolanna joined him, folding her lanky body into the too-small space provided by the seat.

The cabbie craned his neck over his shoulder. “Say, folks, does one of you wanna use those opposable thumbs to crank the radio? Under the seat. My show’s up next.”

He and his thumbs obligingly found the knobs and turned up the volume. The sound of multiversal static was somehow more colorful than the regular kind, but over the pop and crackle, a program came in reasonably well.

_“—and sponsored by the Holy Roller Derby. Buy tickets at the Bay Falls Roller Arena this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Now, it’s time again, listeners, to make sure that you’re keeping right with the Holy Edicts. We live in a sinful world, and it’s easy to get beguiled by—”_

Ugh, religious talk radio. Another multiversal constant, unfortunately; it turned out that almost every religion there was thought it was The Religion. At least Splinterpoint’s various religious guilds mostly kept the holy wars to themselves. The rest of the city held fast and true to the Tolerance Aphorism, which suited most of the community just fine. If any particularly zealous group got out of hand with their conversion tactics, they brought down the wrath of the entire secular majority, which included all the heavy hitters, from the mercenaries to magic-users to mad scientists. Nothing like the epic defeat of a bunch of true believers to keep the rest of the bloodthirsty proselytizers in line.

Which unfortunately didn’t preclude the Communications Guild from broadcasting crap like _this_.

To compound his annoyance, the ride would be longer than it would’ve been had they managed to get a hovercar. The things he put up with in order not to be inundated in a crowd. It was just stressful, never knowing when a magic spell might pop up out of nowhere, until he’d already walked right through it. At least his cabbie was sensitive to such things as well, and Nunzio didn’t even have to ask that he take them on an only slightly more circuitous route to avoid driving through Witches’ Row.

Though, even if it meant tolerating the cabbie’s questionable taste, the added time also gave Nunzio the chance to speak to Lolanna.

“So, there’s this shop. Where we’re going, you know,” he said as nonchalantly as Humanly possible. Lolanna turned to look at him, brows furrowing. He plowed ahead, “I’d hate for you to feel bored, waiting for me while I case the joint and look for Blatt. If you want to take time to look around, try some stuff on, don’t be shy on my account.”

“I am here to monitor your actions, Hunter Arquette, not browse the wares,” she told him.

“Yeah, I know. But you’re a capable woman, and I know that hardware you have right there,” he indicated the steel eyepatch, “allows you to hack into video feeds. Like, say, the one from our little bird here.” He nodded at the drone that was humming loudly as its tiny propulsion system kept up with the pace of the quadrupedal cabbie. “You can monitor my actions through it, can’t you? Isn’t that why you sent it into the comm-unit with me?”

She looked away briefly, and he knew he’d surmised correctly.

“This is fact,” she allowed. “What is your point?”

“I think my hunt might be better served if you stood back from the hands-on proctoring, is all,” he said carefully.

It didn’t work at all. Her back stiffened and her shoulders squared. “You cannot be suggesting that I shirk my duty.”

“No! No, no, no, of course not,” Nunzio said, waving his hands for emphasis. For the benefit of the drone, he added loudly, “That is, of course, far out of regulations, and I would never ask you to, um, shirk anything.”

“Good. I take my duties to the Guild quite seriously.”

“I know you do,” Nunzio agreed and tried not to sound as aggrieved by this fact as he felt. “You’re… very honorable.”

This seemed to smooth her feathers, and she gave a sharp nod. “Then the matter is settled.”

It wasn’t, but he had to take a moment to collect himself for another round.

_“—So you see, the cleansing power of pain can purify your soul. If you have trespassed against the Edicts today— and I know you have, you dirty little liars— go to your stove, turn the burner on, and put your hand—”_

Loudly, so he wouldn’t have to hear the absolutely _terrible_ spiritual advice, Nunzio tried again.

“All I’m saying is that this part of the snag requires a bit more subtlety. I mean, if Blatt is holed up in the shop, he’s not going to be standing at the till waiting for the first bounty hunter to come along and bust him. It’ll be hard enough to sneak into any areas he might be hiding to begin with, much less with a… statuesque sort such as yourself, doing your duty by standing a few feet from me and not assisting me in any way.”

“I cannot interfere with your hunt,” Lolanna insisted firmly.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It works both ways, doesn’t it? You can’t help me, but if your physical presence actually _hinders_ me, how is that supposed to be a fair evaluation?” Nunzio pointed at the drone again. “It’s not dereliction of duty, either, because you can still keep your eye on me, even if you’re not there. You see me put a toe out of line, you call the whole thing off.”

The mercenary woman narrowed her eye at him. Grudgingly, she said, “Your logic is sound, Hunter Arquette. As Guild Proctor, I shall allow this.”

Nunzio sighed his relief as quietly as he could. “Wonderful. Thank you, Proctor Solang.”


	3. Chapter Three

**CHAPTER THREE**

Yantero Road was pretty bland for Splinterpoint, most of it appearing to have been some kind of massive strip mall in a previous life, if strip malls could be made of a combination of green adobe-like material with transparent red honeycomb-things for windows. He told the cabbie to stop half a block before they reached the shop.

They got out and the dog extended his foreleg in a gesture that looked very much like the ‘shake hands’ trick Humans taught their pets back on Earth. Nunzio was struck by sudden homesickness for a moment, but then he noticed the cybernetically implanted card reader in the mutt’s forearm.

“That’ll be thirty credits,” the cabbie growled.

“Right.” Nunzio swiped his card and entered in a generous tip. The ride had been completely magic-free. Despite the awful radio show he’d had to endure, he felt like throwing the guy a bone. The hellhound gave a tongue-lolling grin and wagged his tail enthusiastically. Nunzio pulled away with alacrity to avoid the beast’s acidic drool.

He turned toward Lolanna as the cab drove off, only to find that she’d taken up a stern parade-rest stance, glowering cyclopically at the street, her back to the shopfronts. The city was less crowded in this area, it being more high rent, and the two of them stuck out like sore thumbs. People were already starting to stare uneasily.

“What are you doing?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

“I am waiting for you to finish your business here,” Lolanna said.

“Yeah, well, can’t you at least wait inside the shop? Preferably without acting like you’re waiting for a fight to break out.”

Lolanna set her jaw. “I know you wish for me to distract the staff by pretending to be a customer. I will not assist you in such a manner.”

Dang, she’d cottoned on. So much for that, then.

“I don’t expect you to,” he said in an innocent tone that she obviously would not believe.

“You are trying my patience,” she warned severely. The drone ruined the effect of her impressive scowl when it drifted between them to zoom in on it closely.

“You don’t even have to _talk_ to the staff. Christ, just, you know, go inside so you’re not a walking red flag.”

“The Honor Code requires—”

“Yeah, I know,” Nunzio interrupted. “But there’s a time and place for the declaration of challenge. I know what I’m doing here. So, please, just go inside and wait for me.”

Lolanna huffed and began to walk up the street without responding. Taking this as the best he was going to get, Nunzio trailed after her. He pointed out the storefront before they reached it.

“That one, right there. I’m going to find the back door.”

“As expected from a man of your tastes,” Lolanna muttered under her breath.

Nunzio blinked, then grinned. “Was that a joke? Seriously?”

She gave him a quelling look, but the smallest tilt to her lips gave her away. The mild mirth faded quickly, replaced by her usual chilly formality. “Hunter Arquette, I will be paying close attention to your progress. You have a penchant for collateral damage that the Guild finds… taxing. Given the nature of the d6 limitation of your license, they are aware that your ability is to blame for most of the incidents on your record. However, you would do well to take strenuous precautions regarding contact-triggered side-effects.”

“I always do,” Nunzio told her, his smile fading. Hadn’t she been paying attention all day?

He looked up to see a brief flicker of sympathy in her eye, but she simply nodded in dismissal. “Good hunting. I shall wait inside the building.”

Nunzio hustled toward the gap between the storefronts and then poked his head around the corner to see Lolanna’s reaction when she looked through the big red windows to the display. She stopped dead with her hand on the door handle, pausing for a good five seconds before she turned toward him and glared balefully.

Gronl Skroinx owned and operated a lingerie store called Daisy Chains, which specialized in under-armor of a risqué nature, and catered to every gender and species that showed a passing interest. Zin’s info had included the shop’s digital catalog; the merchandise looked like the wet dreams of Luis Royo and Boris Vallejo had taken acid and then gone to the nearest forge to consummate their undying love of iron wedgies. Nunzio had no idea what kind of things were on display for passersby, but even at this distance, he could see the flush crawling up Lolanna’s corded neck to settle deeply on her cheeks.

He ducked back around the corner of the building and smothered his shit-eating grin behind his hand so the drone— and thus, Lolanna herself— couldn’t see. He didn’t want her getting her apparently-not-chain-mail knickers in a twist and deciding he was too much of an asshole to bother humoring him by going inside the store. He waited until he heard the door open with a chime before heading off down the alley.

The suns had passed their peak, leaving the narrow passage between buildings in dim shade. A soft breeze wafted the odor of the trash receptacles softly reeking in the heat of the afternoon. There weren’t any homeless beings here; the Guild of Beggars, Vagrants, and Hobos had agreements with the Merchants’ Guild to keep the unsightly poor out of the ritzier retail districts. Had there been any, Nunzio might’ve been able to question them about Blatt, but the lack didn’t trouble him overmuch. It made sneaking around a lot cheaper without having to bribe anyone’s silence. He rounded the corner and ducked behind a trash bin.

The back of the shop was unremarkable, no windows and a single large, hexagonal red door with the words ‘DELIVERIES ONLY’ painted onto it, which overlooked a small patio and a larger alley. There weren’t any overt security devices aside from a small black panel over the door, where likely a camera or scry-ward focus was housed. Nunzio gave a tight-lipped smile. Some shops took theft deterrents to a whole different level, but it seemed Gronl either paid enough protection insurance to the Thieves’ Guild not to worry, or was subtler than most.

To test which it was, Nunzio caught the drone as it hummed next to his ear, ignoring its surprised buzz and chucking it like a baseball. It hurdled into the middle of the patio before its propulsion unit managed to stop its sudden momentum. It hovered in the open a moment, disoriented, before making a beeline back to his side. It circled him once before hovering right in his face, zooming in accusatorily.

“Hey, sorry, just testing a theory,” he whispered to it. “Guild Charter, section 4, paragraph 3, subparagraph D, using available materials to establish a course of action without incurring bodily harm.”

Nothing had reacted to the drone’s presence with lasers or fireballs. Satisfied that he wasn’t going to be struck dead by simply venturing out of his hiding place, he crept out with his back to the wall and one hand on the butt of his nerve disruptor.

Once he was underneath the innocuous black panel over the door, he raised his free hand. The entrance was actually fairly short, so he didn’t have to reach very high. His hand tingled when he did; it was a scry-ward focus, all right. At least he didn’t need to worry about Blatt watching a vid feed of this and knowing his doom was poking around outside. He touched the dark panel directly.

He felt the magic inside snap and vanish, prickling tingles running through his hand. He bit back a curse, shaking his fingers out even as he turned his attention to the door itself. There was a small red panel inlaid in the wall next to it, awaiting an authorization code to open the door. He debated just breaking it like he had the scry-ward, but that might just jam the door shut.

For this task, he had a neat little gadget in one of his many coat pockets. He dug the code bug out and pressed it to the input pad. Its shiny bronze legs latched on and dug in with wires, and in a few seconds, the panel flickered green. Nunzio stowed the code bug, then hit the button to open the door.

The door began to rise like a garage door, sections rattling noisily.

Nunzio dropped down and looked around the corner of the doorway. The immediate area beyond appeared deserted, metal shelving units filled with wooden crates blocking the view of much of the backroom. He rolled under the door and squeezed himself between two stacks of crates and into the gap behind them, back against an overfull shelf. The drone followed him more slowly, and he got the feeling it was doing it out of revenge for the baseball stunt.

With a heavy clank, the door finally came to a gaping rest. Nunzio waited with his heart hammering. The store wasn’t that large. Anyone in the vicinity had to have heard the door go up.

Sure enough, someone came to investigate the disturbance, footfalls echoing on the tile floor. Nunzio peaked cautiously around the crates, expecting Gronl or perhaps Blatt himself.

It was neither. Nunzio’s breath caught despite himself.

The man, for all appearances Human, was tall, pale, and well-muscled all over, a fact emphasized by the chain mail banana-hammock that did very little to preserve the man’s modesty, but Nunzio supposed that was the point. After a moment he finally dragged his eyes away from the glittering metal pouch nestled between long, lean thighs and up a hairless abdomen and chest that couldn’t have been sculpted any more perfectly by Michelangelo, to broad, sinewy shoulders, and finally to a handsome face with a high forehead and patrician nose. Short black hair made him seem even paler, and eyes as gray and sharp as a knife’s blade peered in confusion at the open door.

The soft hum of the drone seemed very loud, and Nunzio put his hand on it to muffle the sound, careful not to block the camera. He held his own breath as the man lingered and stepped outside to the deserted alley, having to duck to get under the low frame of the door. The view of the man’s back and backside was just as appealing as the rest of him.

Even as Nunzio allowed himself a good ogle, he noted that the man didn’t move with a mere model’s self-conscious posturing, but with the controlled motions of a fighter. Multipurpose hired muscle, then. Nunzio silently drew his nerve disruptor and set it to stun. He had no idea if he could take the guy in a fair fight, so if it came to that, he wasn’t about to make it fair.

“What are you doing, you worthless ape?”

The guttural and oddly nasal shout came from the backroom, and Nunzio almost jumped. He hadn’t heard anyone approach, and he mentally cursed himself for getting so distracted. The man outside turned back with a grimace, looking toward the speaker, who remained out of Nunzio’s line of sight.

“Nothing, sir,” the employee said, nothing meek in his baritone voice.

“Trying to run out on my wife?” accused the other, and Nunzio perked up. “You signed an indenture contract, didn’t you? You an oathbreaker? You some honorless whoreson who’d do a runner on the sow who took you in, fed you, clothed you?”

The questions were punctuated with the clop of hooved feet taking belligerent steps closer. Finally the potbellied, tusked Blatt Skroinx came to stand almost directly in front of the narrow view provided by Nunzio’s hiding place. He hadn’t changed much since the last time Nunzio had seen him, perhaps a bit heavier, a bit angrier, the greenish-brown bristly fur that coated him a bit mangier. The man seemed as unimpressed by the hog as he himself; the look on his face blanked even as disgust clearly shone in his striking eyes.

“No, sir.”

“Why’s the door open, then? Why aren’t you out on the sales floor, warbling for the customers?”

Blatt was so close that Nunzio could literally smell him. Whoever said that pigs were clean animals by nature obviously had never caught a whiff of this one. The eagerness to get this snag over and done warred with his good sense. Blatt’s back was to him, which was the only thing that kept him safe from a disruptor bolt. While mostly Nunzio appreciated the Mercenaries’ Guild’s Honor Code, sometimes it was idiotically inconvenient. He couldn’t help the impatient fidget, but froze when he saw the Human’s eyes dart past Blatt’s shoulder to his hiding place.

Fuck, the dude had spotted him. Had to have. Nunzio tensed and readied himself for the declaration of challenge that had to precede an attack. 

“It was too cold back here,” was all the man said. He gestured to his chain mail package. “Men react to such things in a way that would not compliment Lady Gronl’s workmanship.”

“ _I_ have never noticed a problem with the cold,” Blatt sneered suspiciously.

“No, I suppose in your case such a small change would hardly make a difference.”

Disbelieving, Nunzio bit his lip hard to keep from giving a bark of laughter at the cheap dig. Blatt snorted his fury, but before he could retort in actual words, there came the sound of a swinging door and rapid approach.

“What is taking so long, Kol’daar?” another grunting voice that closely paralleled Blatt’s demanded loudly. It could only be Gronl. She drew nearer, and from the faint jingling and creaking, he could only guess that she, too, was wearing one of her creations.

“Wife, your peon has offered me insult!” Blatt squealed, turning to address Gronl, who remained out of Nunzio’s narrow field of vision. “I won’t be disrespected in my own home.”

“Then it’s a good thing that this is _my_ home, and I don’t care,” Gronl replied, sounding harried. “Kol’daar, stop wasting your breath on that swine. There’s a lady who can’t make up her mind out there; perhaps you can convince her to make a selection. Why’s that door open? Never mind, I don’t care. Just close it and get out on the floor.”

While Blatt sputtered indignantly, the man’s eyes flickered infinitesimally toward Nunzio’s hiding place before he turned and obeyed. The delivery door rattled shut, and Kol’daar walked away without another word.

Nunzio let out a silent, relieved sigh. He’d thought for sure the jig was up. But it wasn’t hard to figure out why the man would have it out for his boss’s awful spouse, if this brief interlude was any gauge of Blatt’s behavior since arriving. Perhaps Gronl had even instructed her staff not to interfere should anyone come to collect the bastard. Whatever the reason, Nunzio was grateful. Maybe he’d buy the guy a drink, when this was over.

Blatt blustered, “Gronl—”

“Shut up, Blatt,” she cut him off harshly. “You’ve burdened me with your presence, and there’s nothing I can do about that, but I’ll be damned if I let you bully the help because you’re bored. Kol’daar is much more useful to me than you are. Have you finished oiling the Habatian collection yet? No? Then get back to work.”

“But Gronl—”

“Don’t you dare start with me. Husband or not, you’re lucky I don’t comm the Mercurian Guild and collect the reward myself,” Gronl threatened darkly. “I don’t want to hear another peep out of you until it’s done, you hear me?”

“Yes, Gronl,” Blatt replied sullenly, even as she marched away without acknowledging him further. His lank tail lashed in impotent anger where it stuck out of his worn trousers, and as soon as the sound of her steps faded, he started to mutter imprecations about both his wife and the Human.

Finally, the two of them were alone. Nunzio could offer his declaration now and try to blast him, but when he tried to ready his disruptor for the shot he jammed his elbow against the corner of a crate that stuck out from the shelf behind him.

Ow, right on the funny bone. Painful tingles seared the nerves all along his forearm. Nunzio winced, throat clenching around his own swallowed curses.

It seemed that Blatt hadn’t heard the _thunk_ of impact over his own bad temper, because he didn’t whirl around or start running. He did, however, stomp away, still bitching. Well, perhaps it was for the best. This hiding spot was obviously not the best place from which to stage an assault. Nunzio let go of the drone to hold his disruptor with both hands, bolstering his weakened grip.

He gave Blatt a head start of few paces before he slunk out. The hog wasn’t in sight anymore, but Nunzio could still hear him. Stealthily, he followed the sounds of Blatt’s grunts through the cluttered storage space. Ahead, Blatt’s footsteps ceased, followed by a wooden squeak and a metallic jangle. Nunzio positioned himself behind a shelf and stole a look around the corner, the drone mimicking him at about chest height.

Blatt sat on a stool before a workbench littered with what appeared to be a series of metallic bookmarks on thin chains, to which he was applying a strong-smelling oil and buffing with a cloth. Nunzio had no idea what kind of anatomy it had been designed to cover, but that was hardly important. Blatt appeared unarmed, though he could probably throw just about any of the tools or armor at him. A simple swinging door about five meters from the workbench could only lead to the shop proper. The layout of the shelving units and stacks of crates made it pretty much impossible to circle around to an angle to cut off that route of escape.

Nunzio would just have to stun Blatt quickly so he couldn’t make a bolt for it. He wasn’t particularly worried. He took a deep breath, taking careful aim around the shelving. The drone whirred softly, pulling back to get the whole scene in the shot.

In his best badass voice, Nunzio called out, “That’s all, Porky. Put your hooves up or I’ll blast you into bacon bits.”


	4. Chapter Four

**CHAPTER FOUR**

The Honor Code was how the Mercenaries’ Guild differentiated itself from the Assassins’ Guild. As Nunzio wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer, he understood the reason for the required declaration. It wasn’t honorable to kill someone without giving them a chance to defend themselves. Assassins didn’t give warning, mercenaries did. Simple, see?

Simple, even if the declaration of challenge was tantamount to suicide sometimes. But that was ‘honor’ for you. The trouble with making things a fair fight was that sometimes you lost. If you were lucky, your quarry wasn’t a quick draw with any weapon, couldn’t kill with a word, gesture, or thought, and didn’t have a bomb, doomsday device, or someone in reach to use as a hostage. If you were _really_ lucky, sometimes they actually surrendered, but Nunzio had never been that lucky yet.

Blatt, a talentless coward, chose to run. Nunzio fired, the energy pulse cutting the air with a _zzzot_ and striking the porcine alien directly in the center of his back. It made Blatt give an earsplitting squeal, but far from stunning him, it seemed to spur him into a more energetic flight. He plowed through the door while Nunzio swore and hastened to follow.

He flung himself out into the store even as he turned up the intensity on his nerve disruptor. God only knew what setting would work on Blatt, and Nunzio couldn’t afford to turn the setting up _too_ high. That would stop Blatt’s heart and respiratory functions, and the Mercurian Guild wanted the bastard alive. If he accidentally killed the target on a live-capture contract, there went not only the reward but also his evaluation and his badge, in one roast-pork swoop.

The first thing Nunzio noticed on the other side of the door was that the store was larger on the inside than outside. While it should have only been about the size of a coffee shop, the interior of Daisy Chains was more about the size of a department store. Aisles stretched off, created and punctuated by racks of gleaming negligees, mannequins of many different species, and glass display cases of bejeweled G-strings and things that Nunzio could only assume were equivalent coverings for alien genitals.

The second thing he noticed was that Blatt was pelting down the aisle ahead of him, headed for the distant, red-tinged light of the entrance.

Nunzio took aim and fired. Blatt squealed, but he kept running.

“Dammit,” Nunzio said, following and turning up his nerve disruptor another notch.

The customers all around the sales floor began to react, some staring, others taking cover, most running for the door. Nunzio kept them in his peripherals. Other mercenaries might not care about collateral casualties, but he didn’t like ruining other people’s days if he wasn’t contracted to for that purpose.

_Zzzot_. Squeal. Blatt kept running.

“Dammit!” He upped the juice yet again.

_Zzzot_. Squeal. Nothing. The disruptor ought to work on anything with a nervous system. What was Blatt made out of— jelly?

The only effect the repeated barrage had was to encourage Blatt to finally grasp the tactical concept of cover. He abandoned the straight, wide-open aisle in favor of weaving through the racks. Nunzio followed, dodging the displays and shocked beings that would not have looked out of place as extras in _Heavy Metal_. Barely clad, triple-breasted chicks and gargoyle-men with spiky codpieces alike shrieked and fled.

“Gronl! Wife, our house is under attack!” cried Blatt. Or wheezed loudly between panted breaths; he obviously had spent too long sitting behind the controls of his interdimensional transport, eating nothing but instant foods.

It occurred to Nunzio that he could easily overtake Blatt and tackle him. The next thing that occurred to him was that Blatt could easily gore Nunzio to death with those yellowed tusks. Getting physical was therefore a bad idea. Sighing, he tried one last shot, which was accompanied by another, more desperate shriek and the smell of burning ham, but still Blatt remained mobile.

“For fuck’s sake,” Nunzio growled in frustration. The only settings left on his disruptor were ones designed to kill or leave the victim a drooling vegetable. He holstered it and started patting his pockets.

They were drawing near the fitting rooms, where there was a counter and a cleared space. Blatt was headed for a piglady with an immaculate beehive updo standing beside the counter, who could only be Gronl. She wore something made of gold mesh and leather strips that strained to contain each of the twelve teats all down her front, and she looked less _surprised_ by the chase going on than supremely pissed off. Beside her stood Kol’daar, who held something that resembled an oversized dream catcher without any beads or feathery ornaments, a wide grin on his face as he watched.

Nunzio found the tiny, blunt grapple he was looking for and attached it to the monomolecular wire in his wrist-comm. If he couldn’t zap Blatt, he’d just have to hog-tie him.

He took aim again and fired.

And missed, because Blatt had used the seconds Nunzio had spent preparing his attack to yank a rolling rack of chain mail bikinis and hurl it into Nunzio’s path. The grapple struck a breast-cup and latched on, and the wire began to retract automatically, drawing the rack directly toward Nunzio at speed.

Nunzio might have dodged, had not several things happened at once.

A series of bright, plucked-string chords chimed, bringing the distinct tingle of magic. It was different from any magic Nunzio had come across before because it wasn’t localized. It swelled in the very air, pressing on him on all sides, the buzz of the enchantment not nearly as harsh as usual. If a regular spell felt as sudden and unpleasant as a water balloon to the face, this felt like being gently rolled under and swept along by an ocean wave.

Everything slowed down, the world’s tempo running at half speed.

Lolanna drew back the curtain of her changing booth and revealed herself in a diamond-encrusted corset-style breastplate and matching metal panties. The pacing of the event was reminiscent of a coy burlesque show. Of course, a dancer in a burlesque show probably would have shaved her pits and bikini line, and probably wouldn’t be scowling death at the audience with her one blazing eye.

The worst part was that whatever magic was at work, while unique in Nunzio’s experience, still had no more effect on him than any other sort. Which meant that he was still running full tilt when he got distracted by his proctor’s shocking change of clothes. Stupidly, he noted that the burnished steel armor matched her eyepatch.

And that was how Nunzio managed to slam into the rack of lingerie, knocking him and it to the ground.

He was immediately ensnared by various filigree chains. They stung like jellyfish, and he realized with sinking horror that they were all enchanted— or, well, they _had_ been.

The music stopped as suddenly as it began, and while Nunzio struggled to get free, he heard a meaty _thwack_ , followed by a thud that shook the tiled floor.

“That was a beautiful right hook,” Gronl said, impressed.

“My pleasure, Lady Gronl,” came Kol’daar’s smug reply.

Oh, no. Oh, fuck. The bottom dropped out beneath Nunzio’s stomach. He finally shook himself free of the rack and scrambled to his feet. The scene that greeted him was just as bad as he’d feared.

Blatt sprawled on the floor like the multiverse’s ugliest starfish, completely unconscious. Kol’daar stood over him, one hand holding the dream catcher−thing, the other still clenched in a fist, a supremely satisfied look on his face.

Lolanna approached him, her stride made a bit wobbly because of the unaccustomed platform heels strapped to her feet. The drone followed her, circling Kol’daar excitedly. Kol’daar flinched when it got up in his face and then looked beyond them all to Nunzio.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I am Hunter Lolanna Solang of the Mercenaries’ Guild,” his proctor said before Nunzio could muster a response. She produced her badge from her cleavage, and Nunzio wondered why she’d bothered stowing it there while she was only trying on the armor. Gronl gave it a cursory glance and waved it away.

“I am Lady Gronl Skroinx of the Merchants’ Guild,” the proprietress introduced herself, daintily curtsying with her iron-pleated micro-miniskirt. She gestured grandly to the Human beside her. “This is Kol’daar ox Huuf’ta.”

“Kol’daar ox Huuf’ta, you have apprehended Blatt Skroinx, a being wanted by the Mercurian Guild for freelance theft. The reward for this act is fifteen thousand credits.”

Kol’daar stared at her, completely taken aback. “I— What? Reward?”

“To claim the bounty, you must agree to enroll in the Mercenaries’ Guild,” Lolanna informed him. “I can assist you with the process, provided you are not already beholden by oath to any other guild.”

“He’s not part of any guild, nor is he sworn to any private individual,” Gronl interrupted. Kol’daar turned toward her, his jaw dropping. She cocked her head at him and pointed at her husband. “Getting _that_ out of my hair squares our debt, dear. Consider your indenture prematurely settled.”

“Lady Gronl,” Kol’daar said, clearly touched by the words.

“Do you wish to proceed?” Lolanna asked briskly.

Kol’daar glanced from his erstwhile employer to Lolanna and back to Nunzio. “I— I would, but I was only trying to help—”

He’d raised his arm to point at Nunzio, exposing his side to Gronl’s thick and unsubtle elbow, which effectively cut off his objection by knocking the breath from his lungs. He dropped the dream catcher−thing, which gave a jarring twang. Apparently, that was the source of the music from earlier.

“Of course he wants to proceed,” Gronl said hastily. She glanced around at the customers who had gathered in a circle to rubberneck. “Hunter Solang, I’d appreciate it if you could wrap this up quickly. I have a business to run, after all.”

“Right away, Lady Gronl,” Lolanna said, inclining her head respectfully.

“Did you wish to buy the armor?” Gronl asked. “I must say, it brings out your eyepatch quite strikingly.”

Lolanna did not hesitate, merely handed over a credit card drawn from her evidently bottomless bosom. Gronl grunted her satisfaction and stepped around the form of her husband, then stopped to give the bastard a kick in the head as an afterthought. She availed herself of the card reader on the counter and handed the card back to Lolanna.

“Returns are accepted within ten days. Store credit only,” she said. Then she spied the mess of the rack on the floor. She glared at Nunzio. “Hey, you! If you’ve damaged any of my merchandise, you had better be prepared to pay for it.”

Nunzio, struck speechless by the speed at which everything had gone downhill, turned pleadingly toward Lolanna. The warrior-woman had the grace to look a shade regretful, but of course nothing would stop her from doing her duty.

“Hunter Arquette, the Guild does not pay damages incurred during a failed hunt.”

Nunzio winced. ‘Failed hunt’ was not a phrase he’d heard in relation to himself before. The words stung worse than the broken spells had.

Lolanna wasn’t finished. In her most rigid, official tone, she went on, with the finality of coffin nails hammering home the point. “The record shows, as I have witnessed, that Blatt Skroinx was subdued successfully by Kol’daar ox Huuf’ta. Thus concludes the evaluation of Member 769. On that basis, I hereby place Hunter Arquette under probation, pending a second evaluation to be determined at a later date. You are forbidden from accepting any contracts until such time.”

She walked up to him and stretched out her hand. “Hand over your badge.”

Nunzio knew it was hopeless. He knew the Charter backward and forward, knew just how to bend the rules, and knew when they would not be bent.

But he couldn’t just give up his badge without protest. He scrambled for words. “Proctor Solang, um, can’t we talk about this? He already said he was trying to he—”

“The Guild Charter clearly states that collaboration is forbidden during a licensing evaluation, the penalty for which is a lifetime ban from the Guild,” Lolanna spoke over him loudly, glancing at the drone recording everything with its electronic eye. Nunzio took the hint and shut up. Her gaze softened minutely. “Hunter Arquette, you are only on probation. I will personally see to it that your secondary evaluation comes in a timely manner. Now, your badge. Please.”

With a hand that felt numb, he reached into yet another pocket and pulled the shiny metal plate with his name, license classification, and membership number— his whole identity for the past year— over to Lolanna, who received it gravely.

Gronl, meanwhile, had begun to inspect the pile of ruined armor at Nunzio’s feet.

“You’ve wrecked all of it! All my beautiful spells— they’re gone!” she exclaimed, as shocked as she was irate. “I hope you have money. If not, you better be prepared to face the Collections Committee of the Merchants’ Guild.”

Nunzio had no idea how much armor cost, much less enchanted fetish-gear armor. But the Merchants’ Guild Collection Committee was notoriously merciless, even for Splinterpoint.

Dazedly, he asked, “H-how much…?”

Gronl began a running tally, peppered with abuse, and Nunzio realized with rising nausea just how badly fucked he was. The only silver lining he could see was that he’d paid his rent so far in advance when he moved in, because by the sounds of it, this would take the vast majority of his not insubstantial savings.

“Do you even know how hard it is to get the materials to get an epic-level fire-resistance enchantment? Not to mention the days spent in meditation before the actual working! You have no respect for the magical arts, do you, you little punk?”

“Nope. Not even a little bit,” he said.

The weight of the onlookers’ stares made his skin itch, bringing back unsettling memories of the Burrito Incident, and he really thought he might be sick. He had to get out of here. He reached into yet another pocket and drew out a pasteboard card with his contact on it, chucked it on the pile of ruined armor.

“Don’t forget to send me the bill.”

While Gronl hemmed and hawed about his attitude, parentage, and general deficiency as a being, Nunzio began the walk of shame toward the exit.

Of course, this meant he had to pass Lolanna and Kol’daar while they trussed Blatt up with bindings retrieved from Lolanna’s pile of belongings in the changing booth. The drone couldn’t seem to get enough of Kol’daar’s face, hovering worshipfully. Lolanna began to show him how to use a comm-unit to call the Mercurian Guild to claim the bounty. Kol’daar’s forehead was furrowed with concentration, like basic tech was brand new to him. Perhaps it was, at that.

As if he could feel Nunzio’s gaze, Kol’daar looked up and their eyes met. Nunzio only then realized that his sunglasses must have been lost in the scuffle, because without their tint he could see the gray of the man’s eyes was even paler than he’d thought at first. Kol’daar offered an apologetic half smile, raising one shoulder in a helpless gesture.

With that simple, dismissive look— like destroying someone’s life and livelihood was something you could smile and shrug off— all Nunzio’s shock and dismay transmuted to rage in one instant. He glared for all he was worth, fists clenching with the urge to pummel that ‘oops, sorry, bro’ look off the other man’s stupid face.

Kol’daar’s smile faded into uncertainty, and Nunzio swept past before he could do something he’d regret even more than promising to buy Zin dinner.

His fury buoyed him up until he made it out onto the street. The suns had not sunk very much, and without his sunglasses the glare near blinded him.

Certainly that was the reason his eyes began to sting.

Certainly it had nothing to do with all the work of a year up in smoke. Nor was it the fact that he was right back where he was when he’d left Zinchalte— worse, even, because at least then he’d had a way to make money.

He blinked, staring at the alien, never-ending panorama of Splinterpoint for a long moment before he began to walk in the direction of Le Chateau Florida.

He was a very long way from home.


	5. Chapter Five

**CHAPTER FIVE**

“ _So you have failed to make any of the payments of four hundred sesterces per annum to your ex-wife since you were divorced in the eyes of the law,_ ” an acerbic, no-nonsense female voice declared.

Nunzio snorted awake and twitched on his bed, the springs of the mattress groaning. Who was talking? What time was it?

“ _Praetor, I have not made four hundred sesterces in the last year, nor in the years before. I have tried to make ends meet; Juno Moneta knows I have tried to send what I can to my ex-wife, but I must live on the funds myself, as well—_ ”

Whatever the man’s further words may have been, they were lost in the booing and hissing of a large crowd. Nunzio blinked blearily at the darkness in his room. The chronometer blinked sullen red numerals at him, declaring the time to be the ass-end of night, or nearing the ass-crack of morning, however you chose to look at it.

“ _He lies, Praetor. Reliable witnesses place my former husband at gambling houses and bordellos, squandering his earnings instead of supporting his children,_ ” another female voice declared, which earned more boos and hisses.

The sound was coming through the wall. Nunzio frowned. No one lived next door to him— oh, right, yesterday was a moving day. Someone new, then. And an inconsiderate neighbor at that; the volume of the jerk’s scry-cube was up loud enough to wake him from the coma-like sleep into which he’d plunged when he’d finally made it back to his hovel last night.

Using his ability drained him. He hadn’t realized just how many spells had been on the ruined armor until the exhaustion hit him like a freight train, only halfway back to his apartment last night. He’d caved and gotten a cab then, because passing out in the street in Splinterpoint was only slightly less safe than covering yourself in chum and diving into a pool full of hungry sharks.

He couldn’t believe how exhausted he still was. The only other time he’d been so thoroughly wiped out had been after a snag involving a mage who’d invented the magical equivalent of a Gatling gun. That hunt had ended with the most satisfying destruction of Nunzio’s career, even if he’d collapsed on the doorstep of the Wizards’ Guild while turning in his target for the reward.

If left to his own devices, he might have slept for more than a full day. As it was, he was now unpleasantly awake, had a splitting headache, and could no longer escape the memory of how badly he failed his licensing evaluation. It felt a bit like having a terrible hangover the morning after a night of incredibly stupid antics, except you were still drunk and hadn’t managed to black out during the worst parts.

“ _What say you, sir? Citizen Veronica calls your honor into question,_ ” the first voice said. It sounded familiar, somehow.

Nunzio didn’t care enough to puzzle out where he’d heard it before. He pounded on the adjoining wall, taking his frustration out on the aged plaster.

“ _Praetor, I am only a man. I have made mistakes, but I am a loyal citizen of the Empire,_ ” the defendant pleaded, sounding more and more desperate.

“ _He lies, Praetor!_ ”

“ _I am a man of honor!_ ”

“ _You have the honor of a—_ ”

Nunzio pounded on the wall again. For good measure, he shouted, “Hey, turn that shit down! ’M tryin’ to sleep!”

The volume rose by several decibels for the pounding of a gavel and the fierce cry of, “ _Order! I will have order in my court!_ ”

With a growl, Nunzio rolled unsteadily to his feet. He was still wearing his clothes from yesterday, though his coat was on a pile by the door. He couldn’t quite believe he’d managed to pass out in his tie. It was one of his few relics of Earth, which gave it sentimental weight even though he had always hated ties before, but it still wasn’t comfortable to sleep in. He hadn’t strangled himself; at the moment he wasn’t certain if that was necessarily a relief. He loosened it further as he stepped out into the hallway.

He banged on his neighbor’s door. A long moment passed. There was some thumping from the other side of the door. He banged on it again, like the most arrhythmic version of “Shave and a Haircut” ever.

A solid thud from inside the room, and then the door began to open slowly with considerable pneumatic juddering and clanking.

“Look, can you turn that damn thing down? You really don’t want me to get Vorkra up here—” Nunzio stopped speaking when his neighbor finally was revealed.

Kol’daar stood on the threshold. The man was more clothed than he had been, in that he now wore a draping, front-to-back loincloth held up with a narrow leather belt and thigh-high leggings that came across as what happens when you leave Native American buckskins and a Catwoman costume alone in a dark closet to procreate. He seemed equally shocked to see Nunzio as Nunzio was to see him, and they spent a long, poleaxed moment gaping at each other as the scry-cube played loudly in the background.

“ _It is the decision of this court that the defendant be thrown to the lions! Guards, seize him!_ ”

“ _Nooo!_ ”

“ _Hail Praetor Judy! Hail Praetor Judy! Hail—_ ”

“You!” Nunzio finally managed. While he’d experienced many surreal moments since ending up in this city, this was definitely in the top three.

“Um,” said Kol’daar. “Hello again.”

“How the hell— What are you doing here?”

Kol’daar shifted awkwardly. “I live here now. Lady Gronl needed the space for her new indentured servant, and I could afford a place of my own. Your Proctor Solang recommended this building.”

“Oh, she did, did she?” Nunzio had decided on the way home not to hate Lolanna for doing her duty— hell, she probably had even saved him from being drummed out of the guild entirely. This new information had him reconsidering his magnanimity.

“Ah, sorry. About earlier. I really was just trying to help,” Kol’daar offered, his wintry eyes gleaming with sincerity.

Nunzio scowled up at him. The man was ridiculously tall, which for some reason was infuriating. And despite the late hour and what must have been a very busy day, he didn’t appear to have a hair out of place, whereas Nunzio was very aware that he was scruffy, rumpled, and probably had crazy, bloodshot eyes from too little sleep. It was also irritating that Nunzio could tell the guy meant every word of the apology, but even so the anger from earlier refused to die down. It didn’t matter if Kol’daar was _sorry_ ; Nunzio still was shit out of luck. A fact reinforced by Kol’daar’s mere presence here, which proved that the only constant in the entire goddamn multiverse that mattered was Murphy’s Law.

Exhaustion made Nunzio passive-aggressive. “Whatever. Just turn down your damn scry-cube. Some of us are trying to sleep.”

Kol’daar glanced over his shoulder, which was now broadcasting the bloody fate of the defendant. “You mean the magic demon box?”

Nunzio pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm from his reply. “Yes. The magic demon box. ’S called a ‘ _scry-cube_.’ You can turn the sound down with the remote.”

“Ah, haa,” Kol’daar said in a hesitant tone diametrically opposed to comprehension. His brow furrowed. “Yes. _Re-mote_.”

“Yeah. The little rectangle-thing made of crystals?” Nunzio sketched a remote shape in the air with his pointer-fingers.

The lightbulb finally switched on for Kol’daar. “Ohh. So that thing isn’t a magic back scratcher?”

“Are back scratchers typically made of _glowing jewels_ where you’re from?”

“Well, no, but nothing here is like it was back home.” Kol’daar crossed his arms defensively. “How was I supposed to know it wakes up demons?”

“Didn’t Vorkra show you anything when you took the room?”

The landlady usually made a point of giving newbies the full tour, and not just because her guild had a stringent Hospitality Code. Vorkra had jury-rigged the scry-cubes into a makeshift intercom system, which she used to alert the residents of visitors, eviction, and the laundry list of regularly broken systems in the building. The rest of the time, Nunzio assumed people watched programs and shows broadcast by the Communications Guild, and whatever leaked through from other dimensions.

As he’d broken his own the moment he touched it, he had no idea what he was missing. Judging by _Praetor Judy_ , it wasn’t much.

Kol’daar frowned. “No. She told me to ask someone named Nunzio if I had any questions, but I forgot what room she said he was in.”

Yep, and there it was; Murphy, that fucker, really was an optimist. Nunzio groaned and buried his face in his hands.

“Is there something wrong?” Kol’daar asked, alarmed.

“Yes!”

“What is it?”

“I’m _Nunzio_!”

Dimly, he was aware the emphasis was perhaps in the wrong place, but he stood by his answer, as the multiverse seemed to have it out for him specifically.

He couldn’t believe Vorkra had put this on him. The problem with being one of Vorkra’s long-term renters was that she tended to expect things, like basic neighborly decency. Or at least abject terror of her wrath. Truth be told, he might have not minded, if the neighbor in question hadn’t been _this_ guy.

“Oh,” Kol’daar said, clearly getting the picture. He sounded about as pleased as Nunzio. “Then, could you show me how to make the demons go back to sleep? That’s why you came out here, anyway.”

Nunzio dropped his hands to glare at him but had to concede the point. It still didn’t make him feel any more charitable toward Kol’daar. He wanted the scry-cube off, but if it meant helping this guy, then—

An idea came to him and made him smile. He could tell from the way Kol’daar leaned back that it probably was as deranged as he felt.

“Oh, I’ll lay those demons to rest, all right. Step aside.”

Kol’daar hesitated, but the screams of the defendant seemed to make up his mind. “Be my guest.”

Nunzio marched past him and into the small room, which was exactly as his own had been upon moving in. A narrow bed rested against the left wall, the tiny kitchenette dominated the right. A small pedestal table with a vinyl top and chrome edges, flanked by two beat-up, mismatched kitchen chairs, held a leather backpack and the dream catcher−harp-thing.

The bulky scry-cube rested against the wall beneath the single dirty window that stood opposite the door. It resembled the earliest tube TVs from Earth, complete with a polished wooden frame, thick feet carved to look like paws, and rabbit-ear antennae on top. The rounded-square screen and knobs on the front were all made of glowing crystals.

He crossed the room. As Judy Sheindlinicus announced a new case, he put his hand to the screen. There came an audible pop, a shower of eldritch sparks flew out the back, and Nunzio bit his lip hard against the sharp sting of the dispersing magic. The scry-cube went dead.

In the resounding silence that followed, he choked back a victorious cackle. His hand hurt, and his headache throbbed white hot between his temples. It’d been a while since he’d taken out tech as well as magic. Both at the same time was more taxing, but worth it in the name of petty revenge. He turned a vicious smile on Kol’daar, waiting for the cry of outrage when the man realized he’d been had.

“Impressive,” Kol’daar said, looking nothing but mildly interested. “Are you an exorcist?”

Nunzio’s smile fell. “Are you an idiot?”

“Probably,” Kol’daar admitted with a rueful half smile. His eyes were thoughtful as he went on, “But now I think of it, you banished the spells at Lady Gronl’s shop, too. And you make no Noise at all.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I’m making noise right now,” Nunzio said, stomping to the door.

“Yes, but the other noise. The Orphic Noise,” Kol’daar said, like the pronounced capital letters should explain something. “Your Heartsong. You know.”

“I really don’t. Nor do I care.”

At the door, Nunzio hit the control to open it. Nothing happened.

“The only other things I know of that don’t have Heartsongs are the undead. Are you a vampire? One that feeds on magic?”

Nunzio hit the control again, harder. Still nothing. He grunted his frustration. He wasn’t a vampire, but he was starting to feel like a zombie. Christ, he needed to get to bed. His revenge hadn’t worked out because the victim was too dumb to realize what had just happened, but if Nunzio wound up passing out here then all he would have done would be to humiliate himself further. He really needed to start thinking these things through.

“I’m not undead,” he grit out. “Why isn’t your door working?”

“Um, try kicking it? I think the magic’s wearing out.”

“It’s not _magic_ , it’s a piece— of— shit!”

He punctuated each word with sharp kick, and finally the door groaned open with three reluctant jerks. He left without further discussion.

Kol’daar called, “Thanks for getting rid of the de—” but the door closed and cut him off.

Nunzio retreated gratefully to the quiet of his room, peeling off his necktie and slinging it over the back of a chair before he collapsed on his bed. The sound of fingers drumming against his door made his eyes pop back open. He determined to ignore it, but it didn’t go away.

He dragged himself up, fell over, got up again, and checked the viewscreen.

It was Kol’daar, of course.

Using the intercom, he barked, “What _now_?”

Kol’daar jumped and spun around for the source of the voice projected into the hallway. The expression on his face was one of ‘what sorcery is this,’ and if Nunzio hadn’t been about to fall over again, he might have laughed.

“’S an intercom, moron. Whaddaya want?”

“Uh, where’s the privy?” Kol’daar looked as embarrassed as he no doubt felt, asking such a thing to a disembodied voice.

Nunzio let his head fall with a _thunk_ against the doorframe. He’d have to find a way to get even with Vorkra for making him this guy’s personal 411. “End of the hall, second door on the left. Now lemme alone.”

He waited for Kol’daar to leave— which didn’t take long, apparently the guy had been holding it for too long to bother dithering outside Nunzio’s door once a solution presented itself— before he turned back to his bed, his vision already fading with exhaustion. Which was why he didn’t see the coat, which he then tripped over and fell again.

The neighbor directly below him banged on their ceiling, shouting, “Shut up already, or I’ll comm Vorkra!”

With the last of his failing strength, Nunzio curled his hand into the one-fingered salute and passed out.


	6. Chapter Six

**CHAPTER SIX**

The next day, Nunzio regained consciousness exactly where he’d left it, lying in a pile by his door. He felt as flattened as several of the objects he’d landed on, and as sticky as… whatever that thing on the floor was when he pulled his face off of it.

Ugh. Maybe it was time to clean house. Definitely time to shower.

The tiny bathroom at the end of the hall was only one of a dozen in what must have been a more luxurious communal bath chamber. However, as different species had different needs from a cleansing facility, much less a biowaste facility, the large room had been broken up into separate cubicles, each with a little icon on the door to denote species. The approximation of a unisex Human on the door had eyes pointing in opposite directions, but you got the idea. It was thankfully unoccupied when he reached it, and when he emerged clean and clean-shaven, he felt a bit more like himself.

Which meant that it was time to bite the bullet and start damage control. He pulled the blackout curtains open, letting the day’s pinkish-hued sunlight spill in as he started his coffeemaker.

It and the weirdly massive supply of truly terrible Folgers that came with it had been one of his first purchases, and his only true impulse buy, since he’d struck out on his own. He still remembered the serendipitous occasion of his first payment burning a hole in his pocket, and spotting the little machine sitting in a shop window as he’d made his way back to the first awful hovel he’d ended up staying in right after leaving Zin. It had seemed a good omen, proof that Earth could be found again, and he was on the right path to do it.

The little sputtering four-cup machine was probably the crappiest coffeemaker he’d ever owned, and the expired grounds invariably created a sludge that tasted faintly of socks. Regardless, it made the apartment sound and smell like home.

A quick check of his wrist-comm while eating breakfast showed a bill from Gronl Skroinx. He choked on his coffee and Kobold-O’s when he saw the number of zeros in the total. When he could breathe again, he read the itemized list.

He supposed he ought to be glad that she hadn’t tacked on the broken scry-ward as well, but what _was_ there was quite enough. That set with the fire-resistance charm alone cost upwards of a hundred thousand, which made no sense when you thought about how little a chain mail bikini covered. In his albeit limited knowledge of lingerie, less was more, but the idea didn’t hold water— or much of anything— when it came to armor. If a dragon breathed on you, you’d be a smoking pile of charcoal with pristine nipples and naughty bits.

The latter phrase decoupled itself from the preceding sentence and bounced around in his head. It brought with it the unbidden memory of Kol’daar in his banana-hammock, and Nunzio growled, annoyed with himself. Pristine nipples notwithstanding, the man was a lucky dumbass, and not Nunzio’s problem anymore.

He checked the balance on his card with bated breath.

“Ohthankgod,” Nunzio sighed explosively. There was enough. Barely, but enough. The Collections Committee would not come to repossess his coffeemaker, nerve disruptor, or face.

He paid the tab digitally, feeling sick as he did so. No wonder the Mercenaries’ Guild didn’t like him very much, if he was always costing them out the ass like this. He took a moment to be grateful that he’d never botched a snag before, because he knew for a fact that if this was a fair example of how much magic cost, he’d probably totaled the entire sector by now.

For a long moment, he sat, staring around him unseeing, and listened to the sound of his coffeemaker coughing. Times of crisis called for serious self-reflection, didn’t they?

This was a huge setback in his grand scheme of returning to Earth. Added to the pile of other stumbling blocks, it was easy to think that such a goal might be impossible. But Splinterpoint was impossible in many more ways, and if it found a way to exist, then surely there was a way back to Earth.

Not for the first time, he regretted ever laying eyes on Zinchalte. Really, that had been his first mistake.

Well, no, perhaps his first mistake had been his political science major in college. No one had told him when he enrolled how oversaturated the market for half-assed poli-sci graduates had been. He’d had to find out the hard way when he’d landed back in his parents’ basement, unemployed, not even an unpaid internship on the horizon. And of course, the depressed economy meant that the night-security position at the local mall in his hometown had been the best he could get, and that was thanks to his second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do more than his higher education.

If he could go back in time, he’d stop himself from ever making the rounds that fateful night. He would have made Ralph, the other security guard, put down the cheese puffs and go walk the dimmed halls of Highview Galleria. Then it would have been Ralph to find Zinchalte in the jewelry store, picking through a display table of loose diamonds with the blasé attitude of a choosy customer squeezing all the fruit in the produce section.

Ralph would have been the one to chase Zin down and tackle him— well, actually, Ralph probably wouldn’t have done either of those things. Ralph had been paunchy and lazy, occupying the awkward time of life after Too Old For This Shit but before Two Days From Retirement. His participation in such a chase probably would have ended in a coronary or a broken hip.

The point still stood that if it had been Ralph to happen upon a beautiful blue-skinned jewel thief in a _Mission Impossible_ catsuit, neither Human would have gotten dragged along for the ride when Zin stuffed the stolen diamonds into the broken diport and activated the emergency ‘home’ setting. Home for Zin being Splinterpoint, of course.

Once beings figured out the means to travel between the dimensions that made up the multiverse, they discovered the real sticking point of interdimensional tourism: home addresses. Nunzio found it to be a pretty obvious setback, and not just from personal experience. Hadn’t anyone watched _Sliders_ , for crying out loud?

Zinchalte may have used a personal-pan-sized dimensional portal to end up on Earth in the first place, but it had been malfunctioning at the time. His landing in Nunzio’s metaphorical lap had been unintentional, complete chance. Which meant that neither Zin nor the diport remembered the coordinates for his specific plane.

The kicker was that there were _magic spells_ designed for this very situation. They weren’t cheap, and neither was arranging a portal, either by magic or by science, to the revealed coordinates. Most people who landed in Splinterpoint ended up staying there for this reason alone. Most jobs, even if they were gotten through the Guilds, didn’t pay enough to even dream of saving that much before the dismal life expectancy of the city caught up to you.

There had been a window of about four months where Nunzio could have had the spell performed. Granted, he’d been broke and tagging along with Zin, but it had been physically— or should that be metaphysically? —possible for him.

Nunzio’s second mistake— or perhaps third, if he was counting college and the wasted years in a dead-end job— was of course the Burrito Incident. He’d gotten a hankering for refried beans and carnitas, and he’d walked unsuspectingly into the second-worst blunder of his life.

With the advantage of hindsight, the placement and timing of the mysterious street vendor offering just that, wrapped in a delightfully fluffy flour tortilla, complete with set-your-face-on-fire hot sauce, had been suspiciously perfect. If that hadn’t set off alarm bells, then certainly he should have gotten the hint when he asked how much for a burrito and gotten a sinister laugh and the offer of a free sample, both worthy of a B-movie villain played by Vincent Price. The immediate and total disappearance of the taco-shaped truck as soon as the burrito was in Nunzio’s hands ought to have clinched it.

In Nunzio’s defense, he’d been _really_ hungry, and he’d still been wading through his own bout of culture shock. The needle on his internal weirdness meter had been buried in the red for so long that the oddness of the situation didn’t even merit an extra blip.

And the burrito had been delicious. Everything a burrito should be, the primordial essence of burrito-ness distilled into one cumin-laden paradigm of Tex-Mex cooking.

Because, really, the only thing worse than a _burrito_ destroying your life would be a _terrible_ burrito destroying your life.

His customer satisfaction had lasted only until he’d swallowed his last bite, which had been when the curse or whatever it was had kicked in.

There’d been an explosion of a kind, nothing physical, of course, but Nunzio would never forget the feeling of _something_ bursting outward and the harsh, full-body sting, like every inch of him had been snapped by the multiverse’s largest rubber band. Then had come the outcry amongst the immediate populace as everything within a city-block radius that was magical or more technologically advanced than an abacus had suddenly crapped out.

Zin had been haggling inside a shop nearby, and he’d rushed out to find Nunzio, panicked, naked and staggering in bewilderment on pavement that disintegrated to dust under his feet. It had been easy to surmise that whatever had happened was related to Nunzio, which was why the shocked onlookers who’d come to gawk came to the same conclusion, and from there to mob violence retaliation.

The two of them had fled posthaste, Nunzio leaving a trail of broken everything in his wake until he’d passed out. The physical destruction seemed only to apply while he was awake, which allowed Zin to manhandle him off to an unpopulated ruin outside of the Sector 31 limits, to wait out the effects of the curse.

But they never went away, and Nunzio had had to spend a solid month learning mental discipline by correspondence course— the missives written on parchment, held and read aloud by an oddly accommodating Zinchalte— in an effort not to destroy everything he touched. After a week, he’d been able to put clothes on and eat food again. After three, he’d been able to use technology without it frying in his hand. But magic, well… The best he’d managed was to shrink his range to direct contact, but it seemed no amount of training would allow him and magic to interact in any way.

The upshot of the whole humiliating and life-altering debacle was that there was no magical way back to Earth for Nunzio. Meaning he had to depend on science, which sucked.

With a heavy sigh, he shook himself out of his self-recriminations. Well, there was nothing else Nunzio could do at this point.

He had to comm Sakano to tell him he was going to pull the plug. If the automated withdrawal from his credit card went through, he’d have the Bankers’ Guild coming after him to break his kneecaps for the massive overdraft.

Sakano was not the one who answered. A holographic projection of smooth, slimy, decidedly phallic, green tentacles writhed obscenely in midair above Nunzio’s wrist, and he couldn’t help the startled flinch backward that had him nearly falling out of his chair.

“Hello, you’ve reached Sakano Labs, barely a member of the Mad Scientists’ Guild. Would you like to get exploded, liquefied, or completely ripped off today?” the tentacle monster asked. Nunzio didn’t know how, as he couldn’t see a mouth anywhere. Or eyes. Just tentacles.

“Uh, is Sakano in?” Nunzio asked, trying not to look directly at the squirming mass.

“Dr. Sakano is in the lab and cannot be disturbed,” the tentacle monster replied with heavy sarcasm. “I can take a message down if you want, but I don’t think he knows how to read.”

“No, thanks. Can you get him out of the lab? This can’t wait. Tell him it’s Nunzio calling.”

Something in his tone must have alerted the tentacle monster to the direness of the situation. It appeared to perk up. “Oh, are you calling to complain? I’ll get him right away. Hold, please.”

“Thanks.”

The hologram went to a generic projection of a peaceful fountain accompanied by a crackling radio broadcast. Sakano was a bit of cheap bastard— which was actually a selling point for Nunzio. It came as no surprise that the scientist skimped on paying the Bardic Guild the twenty measly credits a month for actual music for his held calls.

“—don’t for a minute think that you will be shown mercy if you are undeserving. The Edicts are clear instructions. If you don’t take the proper steps to cleanse your impurities, the Foes of Heaven will devour your soul before you can ever join your ancestors in the clouds. All things have their purpose, and demons are the punishers of the wicked—”

Oh, Christ, it was that same lame show from yesterday. He rolled his eyes as the host rambled on about the dangers of _not_ mutilating yourself. Nunzio had been raised into Catholicism by his Italian American mother; he’d learned fast and early about the concepts of penance and self-flagellation— but mostly that had been _figurative_. Clearly, this guy was a nutjob.

After about a minute of judgmental rhetoric, the show cut off. The hologram dissolved and then resolved into a Human face. Sakano Ryouta was probably about a decade older than Nunzio, which meant that he was pushing forty. A pair of salt-and-pepper streaks at his temples was the only real clue, his narrow, angular face pale and unlined. Sooty smudges covered his face aside from a clean stripe across his eyes in the shape of his goggles, which were now pushed up into his Einsteinian mop of black hair.

He smiled obsequiously at Nunzio, speaking through his teeth, “Mr. Arquette! It is so good to hear from my number one investor! I suppose you’re calling for an update on MOM?”

“Well, sort of,” Nunzio hedged. “Who’s that answering your calls?”

Sakano’s smile became even more fixed. “That’s Kwiif. I trust she was not rude to you, sir. If she was, I can only apologize from the bottom of my heart. She’s new and still learning proper interspecies manners—”

Nunzio tried not to be surprised that a being comprised of prehensile cucumber dicks could be female.

“Her name is ‘Queef’? Seriously?”

“ _Kwiiffelchilingush_ ,” came a shout, echoing with piqued pride as Kwiif apparently overheard the call.

“ _Kwiif_ for short,” Sakano said loudly, pointedly glaring off in his assistant’s direction. “She’s my new apprentice. Very new.”

“Very apprentice,” Nunzio added, getting the picture. The guilds tended to assign apprentices without considering personalities at all; clearly neither party had been pleased by the outcome. “She wasn’t rude to _me_ , but you might want to have her rehearse a more professional greeting. And change your radio station; no one likes talk radio anyway.”

“I will speak to her about it,” Sakano promised, his smile now more of a grimace. “Would you like a progress update, Mr. Arquette?”

It would probably be the last one Nunzio would hear for a long time, under the circumstances, so he nodded. Sakano loved to talk about his inventions, and the Multiversal Origins Machine was his crowning glory, despite the fact that he hadn’t gotten it to work for shit.

That was basically all the man had to report, but he did so at length, with much gesticulation, exclamations, and maniacal laughter. Such theatrics were part and parcel of the Mad Scientists’ Guild’s shtick, as well as investing research into things no one else considered worthwhile. If you wanted a Death Ray, you went to the reputable Guild of Superscience. If you wanted a “Turning People Into Giant Fruit-Flavored Amoebas” Ray, you went to the Mad Scientists’ Guild.

Magic had already solved the issue of finding homeworlds for the rest of the population, and the Superscientists wouldn’t touch the project when Nunzio brought it to them. The main issue seemed to be the Mages’ Guild getting up in arms over infringement, but there were a slew of practical problems with trying to determine a multiversal mapping system, much less locating a specific universe. The dimensions were constantly diverging and merging. Existing tech could determine major dimensional families and minor iterations, but that was barely any help.

If the multiverse was an infinite housing development, and all the Earthlike universes were cookie-cutter houses in a neighborhood with no landmarks and roads that shifted on their own, then Nunzio was the drunk staggering home after bar-close and trying to guess which faux-Tudor contained his family, friends, and student loans instead of, say, victorious world-conquering Nazis, or a populace that hailed the band _Aqua_ as the pinnacle of modern music, or _both_.

The real trick would be to tell without actually traveling to these places. That was what MOM was supposed to do in theory, but to date Sakano hadn’t managed it. It was disheartening for Nunzio, but mostly because rebuilding MOM was expensive— though apparently cheaper than a dozen steel panty and bra sets.

“MOM was running at full capacity for ten minutes! A record! The mysteries of the multiverse were nearly at my fingertips! Mwahahaha!”

“That’s a good sign, right?”

“Of course!”

“Then what happened?” Nunzio asked, but he already knew. Same old, same old.

“Well. It exploded,” Sakano finished, his arms dropping back down to his sides. The only result this ongoing experiment seemed to prove irrefutably was that Sakano could find a way to blow up just about anything, regardless of its components’ nonreactive natures. “I’ll have it rebuilt in about a week, sir. Incidentally, I’ll need more samples from you. If you’d stop in for—”

“No can do,” Nunzio said with a sigh. Time to drop the bomb. “Actually, I—”

“If there’s a problem with timing, I can send Kwiif over to help you with cell collection,” Sakano volunteered. “As a special, convenient service for my number one investor.”

Nunzio could not conceal the revolted shudder. “Please don’t. Seriously. Anyway, I don’t think you’ll need my samples for a while, at least.”

“Sir?”

“I can’t afford the research at the moment,” Nunzio said, point blank.

Sakano froze. “What?”

“I don’t have the money for it right now. If you could just put the research on the shelf, I’ll let you know when I can resume your funding.”

“But! I am near a breakthrough, I can feel it! Please, won’t you reconsider?”

“It’s not a matter of reconsidering, Dr. Sakano,” Nunzio said. He felt tired as he said it, even though he’d just gotten up. “If there’s no money, there’s no money. I can’t pay for your services for the time being.”

“But at such a crucial stage! You’d really do that to MOM? Have you changed your plans about going back to your homeworld?”

“Of course not,” he snapped, patience fraying. Where’d Sakano get off, bringing that into the discussion? As if Nunzio wasn’t already painfully aware how big of a setback this was. “I just never _planned_ to go broke before that happened.”

Nunzio’s door thundered with a shower of powerful knocks, the kind that Nunzio had always associated with the police coming to bust up a rowdy party. As there was no law enforcement in Splinterpoint, that could only mean one thing.

Vorkra was outside, and she was _pissed_.

“I gotta go, man, but I’ll be in touch. Don’t throw in the towel yet,” Nunzio said hurriedly, and hung up on Sakano’s panicked rebuttal.

He opened the door an almost got punched in the face when two of Vorkra’s fists flew to knock again. Vorkra’s housecoat and slippers were the grease-stained set she wore when she was working on the failing pneumatic systems in the building, and her protuberant eyes were concealed under a set of dome-like goggles. Steam literally poured from her nostrils in her fury, and she seemed disappointed when Nunzio managed to duck beneath the blows.

“Nunzio! You inhospitable little prick! Are you trying to get me investigated by my guild?” she snarled.

“Uh, no?” Nunzio maintained his crouch. “Why do you ask?”

“That new guy next door told me how you _helped_ him last night,” Vorkra spat.

Oh, great. Kol’daar had squealed on him. Nunzio faltered and then rallied. “How’s that inhospitable?”

“You failed to instruct him how to use his scry-cube, lied to him about how it works, and then _broke_ the damn thing. That guy is so fresh from whatever backworld-bumpkin dimension he came from that he thought I kept enslaved demons! If he’d gone to the Hospitality Guild with that story—”

“But he didn’t, right?” Nunzio asked uncertainly.

“No, because he didn’t know how or that he could. But _you_ oughtta know better. And breaking your scry-cube is one thing, but someone else’s?” In her rant, boiling spit flecked out of her mouth in scalding drops. “D’you think those things just fall from the sky? Do you realize that I hafta replace those? But not this time, because _you’ll_ have to, because this is going on your rent. Which is due, right fucking now.”

Shit. Nunzio pinched the bridge of his nose. In the rosy light of day, he could admit that he’d been an asshole last night, but he still felt justified. Of course, explaining the situation to Vorkra would probably just get him evicted on the Feud-Free Housing clause in the lease. But he also knew his credit balance was practically a single digit.

“Uh. Can. Can I, uh,” Nunzio stalled, because this was the last thing he wanted to say. Well, no, second-to-last, as the last-last thing was, ‘I’m homeless and unemployed.’ He forced out through gritted teeth, “CanIworkitoff?”

That drew Vorkra up short. She actually pushed her goggles off her eyes to give him a disbelieving stare.

“ _You_ want an indenture contract? What about your guild?”

“I’m on probation.”

“Huh.” Vorkra clacked her jaw twice as she considered. Then she gave him a toothy smile. “I think I have just the job for you.”

“Oh?” Nunzio mind flashed through all the disgusting, tedious, and dangerous work it was possible for her to find in the building. Even cleaning the bathrooms required a biohazard suit, which itself may very well _be_ a biohazard.

“Oh, yes,” Vorkra sniggered. “I think it’ll be a _learning_ experience.”

The laughter signaled that the emphasis was clearly some kind of cryptic pun. Nunzio didn’t appreciate being the butt of cryptic puns. There was nowhere in any dimension where that was a good sign.


	7. Chapter Seven

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

The next day saw Nunzio sitting behind a cheap desk in one of the conference rooms on the first floor, staring at the mountain of pamphlets that covered its surface. They had names like ‘Interdimensional Displacement and You!’ and ‘Gil’s Guide to Guilds’ and ‘You Think? How to Determine Sentience in Foreign Lifeforms.’ He’d had to read all of them yesterday, last night, and on into the morning.

It was a good thing his coffeemaker wasn’t sentient— he had checked, somewhere after the fourth pot— or he’d owe it for overtime.

The conference room held several rows of chairs and furniture for people with no butts, like the gaseous cloud that had been one of the first arrivals for Le Chateau Florida’s Splinterpoint Orientation Class. Other fresh meat for the SpOC trickled in intermittently as the start time approached, until a motley assortment of species had filled the room. The back row had filled up first, upholding another multiversal constant that said only losers and suck-ups sat in front by the teacher.

He stared at the empty front row that lay between him and them like a demilitarized zone.

Vorkra’s pun had indeed been the worst kind of foreshadowing. Nunzio wished he hadn’t signed the contract, but needs must. He had never been the kind of guy who fit well in a role that required un-ironic enthusiasm, and his only experience with orientation classes had been at the start of college. The presenters had all been the perky, lanyard-wearing, go-getter sorts who assured you that college was ‘rad’ and that on-campus alcohol poisonings and rapes had dropped ten percent since that unbiased study came out a few years ago.

Granted, he wasn’t here to hold these beings’ hands or functionally similar appendages, nor convince them to stop stealing dishes from the cafeteria. If anything, he was supposed to scare the bejeezus out of them, and convince them if they _wanted_ to steal things they had to join the Thieves’ Guild. But Nunzio wasn’t particularly intimidating, either, at least not compared to the enormous cat-bear thing in the back row, whose teeth were so large and sharp its lips wouldn’t close over them. The resultant heavy mouth-breathing was audible even from where he sat, ten yards away.

The chronometer on the wall chimed. It was time to start, then. Nunzio scanned the room again and stood.

“Uh, hi, I’m your instructor, Nunzio,” he said awkwardly, while the class ignored him.

That was all he got out before the door opened and Kol’daar hurried inside, clutching one of the enchanted scrolls provided to attendees in one hand, the dream catcher−harp in the other, and had a full-to-bursting pack slung across his bare shoulders. His loincloth and leggings were lightly scorched, and he smelled of barbeque.

“Sorry, sorry,” Kol’daar said, rushing to sit down. The only place left was the deserted front row. The man slid blithely into the chair directly in front of Nunzio’s desk, throwing the pack down with a heavy clank. “Dungeon crawl ran long. There was this fire mage— Well, never mind. Did I miss anything?”

He’d known Kol’daar would be here, but he’d tried not to think about it. While technically the thing with the scry-cube had been his own fault, letting his temper get the better of his admittedly poor judgement. But Nunzio would not be in this situation at all if Kol’daar had minded his own business from the very beginning. Nunzio might have his hands full with the SpOC, but that didn’t mean he had to lay down his grudge.

The rest of the room still hadn’t noticed that they were supposed to be paying attention. Nunzio was a little grateful, because he indulged himself in a dark glare that seemed to bounce right off Kol’daar’s guileless aplomb without making the slightest dent. He really needed to work on his intimidation skills.

“I was just about to start,” Nunzio told him coldly.

“Hey, teach!” someone yelled from the back row. “Where are the snacks?”

“Yeah,” someone else added, “the invite said there’d be snacks.”

“Snacks?” Kol’daar perked up. “Great, I’m starving.”

Nunzio yelled to be heard over the rising clamor. “Refreshments will be provided only after you have completed the course! So, you all just shut up, and I’ll get started.”

This announcement resulted in displeased grumbling but finally the chatter died down. Nunzio sighed and started over.

“I’m Nunzio, your instructor for the Splinterpoint Orientation Class. You are all required by your lease to aver that you have attended this course and you understand what is expected of you here in Splinterpoint. Your oath will be recorded and is binding under all guild charters as long as you remain a resident of the city. We’ll do this at the end of the class, before the refreshment table opens up.”

Several beings started grumbling again, but he talked over them. “We’ll start with introductions. State your name, species, preferred pronouns, place of origin, how you came to Splinterpoint, and how long you’ve been here. For example, I’m Nunzio Arquette, I’m Human, my pronouns are ‘he,’ ‘him,’ and ‘his.’ I come from a planet called Earth in an unknown dimension. I got here by accidental interdimensional transport involving a citizen of Splinterpoint, which was nearly two years ago. Now, you. Go.”

He pointed at Kol’daar. Kol’daar sat up straighter turning in his seat to address the rest of the room. He didn’t seem nervous in the least.

“I am Kol’daar ox Huuf’ta, I’m Human, and my pronouns are ‘he,’ ‘him,’ and ‘his.’ I come from a land known as Hradica, where my mother, Huuf’ta ox Co’ahlt, is Maeri’su, the queen of all clans.”

Nunzio rolled his eyes. Yeah, right. Funny how many people became royalty when there were no means to check their lineages. Splinterpoint was full of long-lost heirs, and maybe a few of them were even legitimate. But he had a really hard time believing a _prince_ would be able to cope with being Gronl’s indentured clotheshorse and wandering minstrel, much less let Nunzio’s behavior slide without pitching some kind of hissy fit.

“I am not the heir to the throne, so my mother had me serve my people by sending me on a quest,” Kol’daar went on, voice going a bit epic and misty, like he was about to recite an Edda or something. Nunzio half expected him to pick up his harp and start playing accompaniment. “There was an evil sorcerer long ago, who left his wicked artefacts strewn across the land in dark and dangerous hiding places. Many were found and destroyed, but there was one no one had ever located. The White Cup was said to be the sorcerer’s last hold on the world, and it had to be destroyed if Hradica was ever to be free of the threat of his return.

“I and my loyal band searched for many months and through many hardships. At last, we found the cup, but when I took it up in my hands, its wicked magic activated. I found myself flung here to this strange place,” Kol’daar wound down, spreading his hands theatrically.

A big-eyed Gray, the kind of alien UFO enthusiasts back home kept trying to autopsy, began to hesitantly applaud, and Nunzio glared it quiet.

“Thank you, Kol’daar,” he said. “And how long have you been here?”

“Near a fortnight now,” Kol’daar replied and looked like he would have gone on, but Nunzio cut him off with a pointed, “ _Thank you_. Next. And remember we have a lot of material to cover, so if we could all refrain from waxing poetic, that’d be _great_.”

Everyone else seemed to get the idea after that, keeping the origin stories to a couple sentences. Two purple-skinned beings that identified their species as Venusian apparently came from different realities. The Gray gave his name as ‘Phil,’ an obvious lie because he even added air quotes. The gas-cloud had no name and was the only genderless being in the room, preferring ‘zhe,’ ‘hir,’ and ‘hirs.’ The cat-bear was female whose name was a sound like rumble-hiss-snarl that no one could replicate to her satisfaction.

The preacher man Nunzio had run into on the stairs the other day was present. He introduced himself only as Reverend Wadsworth, no first name, and stared disapprovingly around him the whole time. The only other Humans were a group of three teenagers who wore identical school uniforms, had the same dark-brown hair all styled the same, and introduced themselves as one. They vaguely reminded Nunzio of Bratz dolls, generically beautiful, completely artificial, and entirely interchangeable. The only visible difference between them was the color of their eyes.

“I’m Red, that’s Riss, and that’s Rayl,” said the one with red eyes.

“We’re from Earth,” said Riss, the one with green eyes. “Probably in a dimension that no one knows.”

“We go by ‘she,’ ‘her,’ and ‘hers,’” added the amber-eyed Rayl.

“We don’t know how we got here.”

“We were on a school trip and got lost in the woods.”

“We fell asleep and woke up here.”

“We’ve only been here a few days,” Red finished. The three of them shrugged in unison.

“Are the three of you brood-mates?” asked Rumble-hiss-snarl.

“No,” they all responded. Their voices were so similar and in sync that it sounded like one person.

“Are you Humans?” asked ‘Phil.’

They turned and blinked at him. “Yes.”

Nunzio had his doubts about that, but there was still a lot of ground to cover. The introduction part was supposed to help people acclimate by realizing nearly everyone in Splinterpoint was a transplant, and they were all in the same boat as far as dealing with the weirdness that was this city. Next was to explain how dimensions worked, for which there was a pamphlet with several metaphors that were common throughout the multiverse. Nunzio decided to use the layer-cake one, because he didn’t know what a ‘ynarptig’ or a ‘wollendol’ was.

“So if all the major dimensions are layers in the cake, then each slice is a collection of minor iterations,” he explained.

“What is… _cake_?” asked the gas-cloud.

“It’s a thing with layers,” said Rumble-hiss-snarl. “Duh. Didn’t you read your magic pamphlet?”

“You eat it,” one of the Venusians tried to explain.

“What is… _eat_?” asked the gas-cloud.

“We like cake,” intoned Riss, Red, and Rayl flatly.

“Yeah, I bet,” Nunzio huffed, irritated at all the interruptions. “But cake is just the metaphor. Never mind, all right? But yeah, layers, sections of layers. That’s, uh, the important part.”

Kol’daar raised his hand. Nunzio wondered how long he could get away with ignoring that, but Kol’daar started to wave almost immediately. The motion made his admirable chest ripple lightly. Nunzio wished he hadn’t noticed that, because the phrase _pristine nipples_ came back to bounce around in his head, where it was quickly joined by _perfect abs_.

He cleared his throat and looked down at the pamphlets on his desk, pretending to organize them. “Yes, Kol’daar?”

“If we all come from such far and distant places, how do we all speak the same language?”

“We don’t,” Nunzio said, relieved it was a relevant question and not a request to use the bathroom or some shit. He also was glad that he’d read the right pamphlet to answer the question last night and didn’t have to find it in the stack. “Splinterpoint has a collective consciousness as well as a collective unconsciousness. The Guild of Superscience first detected the field about ten thousand years ago. They learned that, basically, the psychic emanations of all the beings in Splinterpoint tend to converge, just as the dimensions themselves do. They intermingle to such an extent that we’re able to communicate no matter what language anyone uses. As long as you can read or speak, you can understand everything written or spoken in Splinterpoint.”

Kol’daar nodded along, his eyes narrowed in consideration. When Nunzio finished, he said sagely, “So… magic.”

“No. Not magic,” Nunzio was clear on this point. If it was magic, then he himself would be unable to understand other beings here, much less be understood by them.

“So, then, _science_?” Kol’daar said the word with the pleased inflection of someone who has managed to use the word of the day from their desk calendar in a sentence.

Happy to rain on his parade, Nunzio corrected, “Not exactly. Science detected it, but doesn’t cause it. They’re not really sure how it happens, just that it _does_ happen.”

“ _That’s_ convenient,” ‘Phil’ said suspiciously. “It broadcasts our thoughts, or something?”

“Um, there’s a section in your parchment about it that gives the pertinent information,” Nunzio said, striving for a lofty neutrality. “I don’t understand it, but neither do the Superscientists.”

“Unless they just want you to _think_ they don’t understand,” ‘Phil’ said. “How do you know you can trust these ‘super’ scientists?”

Vorkra had stipulated in the contract that he wasn’t to deliberately fuck with the attendees, and he damned her for her foresight. While Nunzio fought seriously with the urge to explain the Earthling technology known as a tinfoil hat, Rumble-hiss-snarl spoke without raising her paw.

“You said that the dimensions converge. What did you mean by that?”

“Okay, well, let’s go back to the cake metaphor,” Nunzio said and wished he hadn’t.

The gas-cloud still didn’t get it, and everyone who _did_ felt that explaining cake was more important than explaining what the cake metaphor was meant to explain. Nunzio tried to regain control of the situation by raising his voice but was drowned out by ‘Phil,’ who had covered his ear holes and started shouting phonetic nonsense, apparently determined to keep the Superscientists from invading his head to translate anything. The Venusians seemed about to come to blows over which sort of cake best represented the multiverse, and the three weird girls watched the chaos with oddly rapturous expressions.

A series of notes punctured the bedlam, bringing with it a mild but pervasive buzz of magic. Nunzio recognized this, of course, and he whipped his head back toward Kol’daar, who was indeed strumming his weird harp. He wasn’t looking at Nunzio, though, his attention fixed on the kerfuffle in the back row, a furrow of concentration on his brow. The song he played was lilting and gentle, some kind of lullaby.

The effects were immediate. The Venusians had gotten out of their chairs to grapple, and when the chords struck them, they froze. Baffled looks formed on their long faces, and they blinked at each other, then let go. Rumble-hiss-snarl dropped the chair she’d picked up to hurl at the two combatants, looking surprised that it had even been in her paws. The gas-cloud billowed down from the light fixtures, where zhe’d fled when shit started getting out of hand.

Everyone settled down, righted the furniture, and sat back down with various shades of sheepishness and confusion. Even ‘Phil’ had calmed, his voice not the frantic bellow it had been, but he still had his hands over his auditory organs. The Reverend Wadsworth, who had appeared unmoved by the whole fiasco, happened to be sitting next to him, and the man poked the alien in the side. Grays were apparently ticklish; ‘Phil’ squeaked and dropped his hands to flinch. Then he, too, seemed to mellow further, leaning back in his seat, a dopey grin on his face.

The only people who didn’t seem lulled by the music were Kol’daar, Nunzio, and the trio of clone-girls. Red, Riss, and Rayl had turned as one in their seats to stare fixedly at Kol’daar. Their faces were back to being mostly blank, but Nunzio thought he saw something like dismay or upset flickering in their eyes. Then they performed one of their synchronized blinks, and whatever it was had gone.

Kol’daar finished his impromptu concert with a trill that reverberated sweetly off the conference room’s walls. The feeling of magic was slower to recede, and Nunzio cocked his head at the man. Kol’daar returned the look evenly, his poise enviable.

Technically, the rules of the SpOC forbade attendees to use weapons or magic under penalty of eviction. That much had been made clear on the enchanted parchments. The room was supposed to be set up to recognize use of contraband tech and spells, but the counterspells hadn’t been activated. Huh.

Under the circumstances, Nunzio was prepared to look the other way, and it only galled him a little.

He cleared his throat into the dreamy silence, drawing people’s attention back to him. “Um… And thus concludes the talent portion of class! That was Kol’daar on the, uh—”

“Spiderharp,” the man supplied quietly.

“On the spiderharp,” Nunzio said, eying the instrument. “Say, is that enchanted at all?”

“No.”

“Can I borrow it for a second?”

Kol’daar hesitated, obviously remembering the last time Nunzio had touched one of his possessions. But then he handed it over. Nunzio held the leather-wrapped hoop gingerly and held it up for the class to observe.

“So, Rumble-hiss-snarl asked how dimensions converge,” he said. He pointed at the intricate weave of sinew strings. “They’re kind of like this. The spaces between the strings represent universes, separate but interconnected in a way that isn’t apparent when you’re stuck inside one.”

The webbed design of the harp grew more complex the closer to the middle of the circle. The strings formed a many-pointed star around the gap at the very center. Nunzio pointed this out to his still surprisingly attentive class.

“The more dimensions there are, the more closely they pack together, until there’s no room anymore for the barrier between them. The barrier breaks down, splinters off, and the different universes meld together,” he explained, pointing to the center of the spiderharp. “This is what Splinterpoint is. It’s a pocket dimension that formed at the intersecting point of all these other similar dimensions.

“And I mean similar in the broadest sense. Similar atmospheres, matter composition, gravity, et cetera. Hardly anyone shows up in Splinterpoint that can’t survive this version of nature.” He shrugged. “It happens sometimes, and it can get ugly. Sector 27 had a being made of pure antimatter show up once.”

“There wasn’t a Sector 27 on the map I got,” said ‘Phil’ with only a hint of mistrust.

“Nope, not anymore,” Nunzio agreed. He let that sink in while he handed the spiderharp back to Kol’daar. “Any questions, or can I move on to the guilds?”

There were no objections from the peanut gallery, so Nunzio had them turn to the pamphlet titled ‘The Free Market Corrects YOU.’ It was about what the guilds did to oathbreakers, freelancers who they caught infringing on their professions, and clients who didn’t cough up payment after a completed contract. As such, it was the perfect starting point to encourage people to join up rather than upset the applecart of Splinterpoint’s non-governing bodies.

According to Vorkra, there had always been a problem for the guilds when people showed up and decided that since there was no government and therefore no laws, they could get away with every kind of depravity known to sentient life. It wasn’t that the guilds disapproved of murder, rape, and pillage; it was that these people ought to join up with the Assassins’, Torturers’, or Thieves’ Guilds to do it.

When they didn’t, the guilds had to work harder to enforce the monopolies on their trades, which was a waste of time and personnel. It didn’t take Ayn Rand to see how that was just two steps from the really dangerous kind of anarchy: the unprofitable kind. Down that road lay turf wars and the utter destruction of the economy.

The solution, therefore, was to expand the Hospitality Guild’s purview to include informing new arrivals of how the city worked, let them know that ‘lawless’ didn’t mean ‘no consequences,’ and discourage any freelance mayhem.

“So, say you like to eat, um, Twinks or something. It’s not _illegal_ to do it, but if you go around snacking on people, there’s nothing to stop that person’s friends, family, and guild from putting a price on your head or coming after you themselves. Whereas if you joined the Assassins’ Guild, you could specialize in hits against Twinks, and then you’d get paid to eat dinner,” Nunzio explained, trying to put a positive spin on it. “Plus then you’d have your guild’s enforcers backing you up if someone still tried to retaliate.”

“So basically the guilds facilitate any axe you have to grind?” Reverend Wadsworth asked, showing interest for the first time. His voice was slow and sonorous, clearly crafted for sermons. Something about it was familiar, but Nunzio couldn’t place it.

“Not exactly,” Nunzio said with a shrug. “I mean, if there’s profitable contracts for it, then probably. But they don’t really cover personal vendettas. One good rule to remember is the interdimensionally famous Splinterpoignant Tolerance Aphorism.”

“What might that be?” Wadsworth asked dryly.

“‘Shut up, no one cares,’” Nunzio said. When the preacher man puffed up in offense, Nunzio clarified, “That’s the saying. ‘Shut up, no one cares.’ It doesn’t matter if you hate a specific group, be it religion, species, gender, whatever. It doesn’t matter if you’re a champion of justice for said group. Either way, no one’s going to have much patience for your rhetoric, not when there’s profit to be made, and in a place like Splinterpoint, you can’t avoid the ‘enemy’ forever. So, if you ever find yourself about to go off about inherent superiority or the One True Religion, just repeat to yourself—”

“Shut up, no one cares,” the class chimed not really at the same time, except for the Three Rs, who were as scarily attuned as ever.

Nunzio grinned. “Exactly!”

“What if you don’t _want_ to join a guild?” ‘Phil’ asked. “How do you make a living without doing what They want you to do?”

“Well, there’s indentured servitude,” Nunzio said, carefully not looking at Kol’daar. “Typically you sign a contract with your boss, they pay you in room, board, clothing, any necessary medical supplies, and sometimes even a wage. In exchange, you do whatever labor you’ve been tasked. I don’t recommend it, but it beats slavery, hands down.”

“There’s slavery here?” the Venusian with a swollen eyestalk asked nervously.

“Nope. Slavery needs too much actual law to support it, and it’s, like, _incredibly_ easy for people to escape from slavery here. Magic and tech are too readily available to keep anyone on a leash for long. Someone might be able to get away with it for a while, but eventually one of the slaves is going to bust out and bring the Hospitality Guild down on the culprit’s head like a ton of bricks.”

“Why the Hospitality Guild?” asked Kol’daar, intrigued.

Nunzio shrugged again. “I think way back they were founded by a bunch of escaped slaves from Dimension X or whatever. Also, I guess holding a bunch of beings prisoner, forcing them into servitude with no pay, and brutally beating them whenever you feel like it is an infringement of the Hospitality Code. Go figure.”

“So, I’m _free_?” the Venusian asked as if she didn’t quite understand what the word might mean.

“Yeah,” Nunzio said. Then he thought that maybe the moment deserved something more notable than that. He smiled at her. “Congratulations.”

Her eyestalks bobbed vigorously, and the other Venusian looked away, as if it was some kind of intensely awkward emotional display, like someone bawling loudly on the subway.

After that came a whole lot of fine print involving the guilds and the monetary system, basic concepts of science and magic, and the murkier blending of the two. Kol’daar still seemed not to fully grasp the difference between the science and magic, but Nunzio didn’t really blame him. He vaguely remembered some Earth quote about any sufficiently advanced whatever being the same as another thing, but he couldn’t remember who said it.

The gas-cloud was hopelessly confused by most things. Rumble-hiss-snarl took it upon herself to explain things to hir, but was hindered by ‘Phil’s’ suspicious interjections. Nunzio relished poking at the Gray’s paranoia to a degree that probably proved that deep down he was a real prick. Still, he could barely contain his glee when he got to explain the nanotech that the Medical Guild had released into the atmosphere to weed out any interdimensional plagues before they could take hold in the vulnerable populace. ‘Phil’ practically exploded trying to hold his breath, then pulled his colorless jumpsuit’s collar up over his nasal holes like that would accomplish anything.

No one asked why Nunzio had a mountain of pamphlets instead of one of the enchanted parchments, but he worked in a warning about eating food from untested sources. He was pretty sure most people assumed he meant they’d get accidentally poisoned or something, but as long as the point got across, he felt like he’d said his piece.


End file.
